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THE POEMS 



OF 



FRANK 0. TICKNOR, M.D. 



EDITED BY 

K. M. R,o ^_c 



WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR 

BY 

PAUL H. HAYNE. 






PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
1879. 






Copyright, 1879, by ROSA. N. TlCKNOR. 



: Not less on him than thee the mysteries 
Within him and about him ever weigh. 
* * * * * 

But on the surface of his song these lie 
As shadows, not as darkness; and alway 
There is a human purpose in the lay." 
Timrod. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introductory Notice . . . . . . -9 

Martial and Chivalrous Lyrics. 

Dedication ......... 21 

The Virginians of the Valley . . . . .22 

A Battle Ballad 23 

" Our Left" 26 

Little Giffen 27 

The Sword in the Sea ....... 29 

Cannon Song 30 

"Ora Pace" 3 1 

The River . . 3 2 

Virginia . . . . * 33 

The Gap 35 

Labor — Sacrifice ........ 36 

Our Great Captain 38 

Albert Sidney Johnston 39 

Gracie, of Alabama ....... 39 

Lee 41 

"Unknown". ........ 4 2 

The Grays at Home 4 2 

Gray -44 

Holland 45 

Georgia . . . . . . . ... 47 

The Constitution ........ 48 

Alexander Hamilton Stephens . . . . -49 

"Cordelia! Cordelia!" 52 

Arthur, the Great King 53 

1* 5 



CONTENTS. 

The Caucasian 

Under the Willows 

Atlantis 

Dixie . 

Loyal . 

The Hieland Lass at Lucknow 

" Honor the Brave" 

Battle for the Right 

" Sans Change" 

Agonistes 

Diogenes 

" Barry" of St. Bernard 

The Prisoner at Glatz 

"Felix" 



55 
56 
57 
59 
60 
62 

63 
64 

65 
66 
67 
68 
69 
7i 



Songs of Home. 

A Song for the Asking . . . . . • 75 

To Rosalie ......... 76 

An April Morning . 77 

Twilight on " Torch Hill" ...... 79 

"Do they miss me at Home?" . . . . .80 

Among the Birds . . . . . . . .81 

" In Mamre" 82 

Idyl 83 

To the Little Rosalie . . . . . . .86 

" Mother's Work" 87 

Group of Ducklings .89 

" Whippoorwill" ........ 90 

The Echo Story . . . . . . -91 

Poeta in Rure . . . . . . . -93 

The Flowers. ........ 94 

The Pedler Man at Torch Hill . . . . .96 

"Gelert" 98 

Home . . . . . . ... . -99 



Poems of Sentiment and Humor. 
"Nina" — Her Eyes 
To the Little Lady Alice 



103 

104 



CONTENTS. 



7 

PAGE 
I05 
I07 
I08 
IO9 



Brownie Belle, of the Esquiline .... 

"Sunbeam" 

To a Lady of Texas, in Italy .... 

To . ... 

The Bride no 

The Brown Bridge . . . . . . .ill 

The Valley of Nacoochee 1 12 

The Hall 113 

The Old Harpsichord . . . . . . .114 

The Colonnade . . . . . . . . 115 



The Hills . 
Junialuskee 
Nantahalee 
Fable . 
The Sphinx 
The Farmer Man 



Memorial and Religious Poems. 
In Memoriam 
William Nelson Carter 
Mary .... 
The Churchyard Cross 
Little Katie 

Our Treasure in Heaven 
" The Children that are not' 
Faith .... 
Song by Night 
To Mrs. L. E. C. 
Lines .... 
Illuminating Letters . 
The Cemetery 
The Beauty of Holiness 
Easter 
The Church 



117 
121 
122 
123 
124 
125 



133 
135 

136 

137 
138 
138 
139 
140 
141 
142 

143 
144 

145 
147 
148 
149 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 



In the month of December, 1874, died, near Colum- 
bus, Georgia, one of the truest and sweetest lyric poets 
this country has yet produced. Nevertheless, he lived 
the fifty-two years of his allotted existence in compar- 
ative obscurity, and passed to the " great beyond" 
unknown, despite the rare originality of his genius and 
works, except, indeed, to that small portion of the 
Southern public who condescend now and then to pass 
from politics to poetry. 

Dr. Frank O. Ticknor, born in Baldwin County, 
Georgia, combined in his mental and moral constitution 
many of the best qualities of the North and South. 
His father was a "New Jerseyman," a physician of 
great energy, while his grandparents were natives of 
Norwich, Connecticut. Dr. Ticknor, the elder, mar- 
ried into a distinguished family of Savannah, and 
settled for a time in that city. He died a young man, 
leaving his widow with three small children to support. 
At once she removed to the town of Columbus, ex- 
erting herself with such judicious perseverance that 
she succeeded in giving to her sons excellent and liberal 
educations. 

Frank, when old enough, studied medicine in New 
York and Philadelphia, and soon after his graduation 
married Miss Rosalie Nelson, daughter of Major T. 

9 



IO INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

M. Nelson, a distinguished soldier of the War of 1812, 
and subsequently a prominent member of Congress. 
A few years after this union, Dr. Ticknor purchased a 
farm not far from Columbus, situated on the summit of 
a high hill, and celebrated by tradition as the scene of a 
desperate Indian battle which had been fought by torch- 
light. In consequence he named this place "Torch 
Hill." 

Anything more picturesque than the view therefrom 
it would be hard to imagine. The house overlooks for 
miles on miles the Chattahoochee Valley, full of waving 
grain -fields and opulent orchards. 

With the poet's love of all that is pure, sweet, and 
natural, he soon surrounded his home with flowers and 
fruits. In the spring and summer I have heard it 
described as a perfect Eden of roses : while towards 
autumn the crimson foliage and blushing tints of the 
great mellow apples, especially if touched by sunset 
lights, caused the " Hill" to gleam and glitter as with 
the colors of fairy-land. Here in this peaceful nest 
Ticknor lived for nearly a quarter of a century, excep- 
tionally blessed in his domestic relations, though more 
than once that Dark Presence no mortal can shun en- 
tered his househeld, to leave it for a season desolate. 
Here he dreamed high dreams and beheld pleasant 
visions. Art opened to his soul not one alone, but 
several of her fairest domains. He was a gifted mu- 
sician, playing exquisitely upon the flute, and a 
draughtsman of the readiest skill and taste. Still I 
picture him always as pre-eminently the poet, — the poet 
"born," yet with every natural endowment purified 
and strengthened by careful, scholarly culture. 

Thus much for one side of his life. There was 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. n 

another side, stirring, practical, and often rife, as a 
physician's career necessarily must be, with sad or 
terrible details. If a spiritual "Lotos-Eater" while 
"sporting with his muse in the shade," he was all 
energy, eagerness, and well-directed power in the paths 
of his profession. No more experienced doctor or 
successful scientist than he could be found in the 
county which chanced to be the scene of his labors. 
He united a broad humanity and a tender graciousness 
of tone and bearing to the information of the savant 
and the skill of the medical expert. Everybody loved 
him, especially the suffering poor, to whom he devoted 
a great deal of his time and attention. Unostentatious, 
but profoundly sincere in his Christian belief and prac- 
tice, he regarded the poverty-smitten and the unfortu- 
nate as pensioners directly assigned to his care by 
Providence. 

Far and wide, among the "sand-barrens" or in the 
farmhouses of the neighboring valley, the good and 
wise physician was known and welcomed. His gleeful 
smile, his spontaneous criticisms (for his mind actually 
bubbled over with innocent humors), cheered up many 
a despondent invalid, and it is possible scared Despair, 
if not Death himself, away from the bedsides of patients 
just about finally to succumb. 

What wonder, therefore, that when — partly through 
fatigue, exposure, and the unremitting discharge of 
duty — their benefactor was, in his turn, stricken down, 
to die after a brief, painful illness, the community 
mourned him as only those are mourned who could 
truly say, like Abou ben Adhem, in his vision of the 
Angel and the Book of Gold, " Write me as one who 
loved his fellow-men" ? 



12 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

This imperfect outline of Ticknor's life was necessary 
to the full comprehension of his poetry. " Brief swal- 
low-flights of song" only were possible to a man whose 
days and nights were so occupied by important and 
exacting toils. And in some respects this was fortunate, 
since the comparatively little leisure enjoyed by the 
poet forced him to concentrate his powers, — to utilize 
them to the very best advantage. 

When the great Civil War began, Ticknor had just 
reached the verge of middle age. His intellectual 
forces were in their fullest bloom ; and so it is not 
surprising that many of his ablest songs belong to this 
period. 

Look, for example, at his "Virginians of the Val- 
ley." It is so short that we can readily quote it entire: 

"THE VIRGINIANS OF THE VALLEY. 

" The knightliest of the knightly race 

That, since the days of old, 
Have kept the lamp of chivalry 

Alight in hearts of gold; 
The kindliest of the kindly band 

That, rarely hating ease, 
Yet rode with Spotswood round the land, 

And Raleigh round the seas ; 

" Who climbed the blue Virginian hills 

Against embattled foes, 
And planted there, in valleys fair, 

The lily and the rose; 
Whose fragrance lives in many lands, 

Whose beauty stars the earth, 
And lights the hearths of happy homes 

With loveliness and worth. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. ! 3 

" We thought they slept ! — the sons who kej.t 

The names of noble sires, 
And slumbered while the darkness crept 

Around their vigil-fires ; 
But, aye, the ' Golden Horseshoe' knights 

Their old Dominion keep, 
Whose foes have found enchanted ground, 

But not a knight asleep !" 

Is not this, reader, a splendid lyric? Whether you 
are of the South or the North, especially now that the 
old sectional animosities seem to be dying out, I feel 
sure you must alike admire it. The verve and fire of 
the conception and the simple straightforward powers 
of the execution make it a most impressive ballad. 
James Russell Lowell, in a recent "Ode," has elo- 
quently praised Virginia; but there is a heart-drawn 
pathos, a half-subdued passion in Ticknor's poem which 
seems to me more effective still. Apropos of the lat- 
ter's style, James Maurice Thompson, himself so true 
a lyrist, has remarked that "it is best suited to forceful 
ballads. Something in the direct, clear, ringing ex- 
pression of his ' Virginians' reminds us of 

" ' Mais quand la pauvre champagne 
Fut en proie aux etrangers, 
Lui, bravant tous les dangers, 
Semblait seul tenir la campagne.'' 

With Ticknor, as with Beranger, strength is simplicity, 
art is naturalness. " Mr. Thompson continues : "Few 
poets acknowledge that, to stir the feelings and reach 
the inmost heart of the masses, one must make use of 
those materials which are suited to the vulgar under- 
standing. See the final stanza of that inimitable ballad, 
'La Vache Perdue J by Casimir Delavigne : 



, 4 INTR OD UCTOR Y NO TICE. 

" ' Un soir, a ma fenetre, 
Neva, pour fabriter, 
De ta come peut-etre 
Tn reviendras heurter. 
Si la fa?nille est in arte, 

Neva, 
Qui f ouvrira la porte ? 

Ah! ah! Neva! 1 



Now Ticknor's ballad of ' Little GifTen' is a ballad 
precisely of the style of Delavigne. The opening 
stanza is a bold swell of music, something clarion- 
like. 

" ' Out of the focal and foremost fire, 

Out of the hospital walls as dire ; 

Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene, 

(Eighteenth battle, and he sixteen !) 

Spectre ! such as you seldom see, 

Little Giffen, of Tennessee !' 

The identical rhyme of the last couplet one loses sight 
of in the exceeding terseness of the language, the out- 
right vigor of the rhetorical stroke. Most poets dally 
with their conceptions. But this one seizes his idea at 
once, thrusts it into a position of strong relief, fastens 
it there, and is done. Technically speaking, his style 
is dynamic. 

" Here is another verse of ' Little Giffen' : 

" ' Word of gloom from the war, one day ; 
Johnson pressed at the front, they say. 
Little Giffen was up and away; 
A tear — his first — as he bade good -by, 
Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye; 
" I'll write, if spared." There was news of the fight; 
But none of Giffen. — He did not write.' 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. I5 

The poem rounds off half-solemnly, half-playfully, 
thus : 

" ' I sometimes fancy that, were I king 

Of the princely Knights of the Golden Ring, 
With the song of the minstrel in mine ear, 
And the tender legend that trembles here, 
I'd give the best on his bended knee, 
The whitest soul of my chivalry, 
For " Little Giffen," of Tennessee.' 

"Now, here is no straining after effect, no floundering 
to get up a foam ; but that sturdy art which is the spirit 
of a genuine popular ballad." 

Another poem, which explains itself, — an absolutely 
perfect ballad (me judice), — I cannot resist the pleasure 
of extracting. Was ever the historical incident it 
commemorates more feelingly and vividly described ? 
These verses are simply entitled 



" LOYAL. 

The good Lord Douglas — dead of old — \Y 

In his last journeying 
Wore at his heart, encased in gold, 

The heart of Bruce, his king, 

Through Paynim lands to Palestine — 

For so his troth was plight — 
To lay that gold on Christ his shrine, 

Let fall what peril might. 

By night and day, a weary way 

Of vigil and of fight, 
Where never rescue came by day, 

Nor ever rest by night. 



l6 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

" And one by one the valiant spears 

Were smitten from his side : 

And one by one the bitter tears 

Fell for the brave that died. 

" Till fierce and black around his track 
He saw the combat close, 
And counted but the single sword 
Against uncounted foes. 

" He drew the casket from his breast, 
He bared his solemn brow ! 
Oh, foremost of the kingliest ! 
Go ' first in battle' now ! 

" Where leads my Lord of Bruce, the sword 
Of Douglas shall not stay ! 
Forward ! We meet at Christ His feet 
In Paradise, to-day ! 

"The casket flashed; the battle clashed, 
Thundered, and rolled away; 
And dead above the heart of Bruce 
The heart of Douglas lay ! 

" Loyal! Methinks the antique mould 
Is lost, or theirs alone 
Who sheltered Freedom's heart of gold, 
Like Douglas, with their own !" 

A single other lyric associated with the war and its 
sorrows, and I shall close : 



" UNKNOWN ! 

" The prints of feet are worn away, 
No more the mourners come ; 
The voice of wail is mute to-day 
As his whose life is dumb. 



INTR OD UCTOR Y NO TICE. \ 7 

" The world is bright with other bloom; 
Shall the sweet summer shed 
Its living radiance o'er the tomb 
That shrouds the doubly dead ? 

" Unknown ! Beneath our Father's face 
The starlit hillocks lie ; 
Another rosebud ! lest His grace 
Forget us when we die !" 



Ah ! how many thousands must be still living to 
whom this ballad, rounded and limpid as a tear, though 
simple almost to baldness in expression, must appeal 
with a pathos not to be resisted ! 

Burns himself was not more direct, more transpar- 
ently honest in his metrical appeals than Ticknor. 

There are no fantastic conceits, no far-fetched similes, 
no dilettanteism of any sort in his verses. 

The man's soul — sturdy yet gentle, stalwart yet 
touched by a feminine sweetness — "informed" them 
always ; and, if it can hardly be said of his lyrics that 
each was "polished as the bosom of a star," still the 
light irradiating them seldom failed to be light from 
the heaven of a true inspiration. 

PAUL H. HAYNE. 



2* 



MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 



19 



DEDICATION. 

E. P. C. A LILY OF THE VALLEY. 

Thy smile, sweet sister, on my lay, 

Is as the stars, I ween, 
That brightens o'er this brilliant's ray, 

Which, else, no light had seen ! 
That kindles o'er some brooklet's way, 

Where, else, no song had been ! 

If aught of summer worth it brings 

In bloom or melodies, 
'Tis little for the lyric wings 

Thy radiance taught to rise, 
But little for a bird that sings 

So near his Paradise. 

By Hope in many a broken home, 

And by the tears that shed 
The proudest splendor of the tomb 

Above the humblest head, 
This song but asks thy soul's perfume 

To crown our Quick and Dead. 



2 2 MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 
THE VIRGINIANS OF THE VALLEY. 

(W. N. N.) 



s/ 



The knightliest of the knightly race . 

That, since the days of old, 
Have kept the lamp of chivalry 

Alight in hearts of gold ; 
The kindliest of the kindly band . 

That, rarely hating ease, 
Yet rode with Spotswood round the land, 

And Raleigh round the seas ; 

Who climbed the blue Virginian hills 

Against embattled foes, 
And planted there, in valleys fair, 

The lily and the rose ; 
Whose fragrance lives in many lands, 

Whose beauty stars the earth, 
And lights the hearths of happy homes 

With loveliness and worth. 

We thought they slept ! — the sons who kept 

The names of noble sires, 
And slumbered while the darkness crept 

Around their vigil-fires ; 
But, aye, the "Golden Horseshoe" knights 

Their old Dominion keep, 
Whose foes have found enchanted ground, 

But not a knight asleep! 



A BATTLE BALLAD. 23 



A BATTLE BALLAD. 

TO GENERAL J. E. JOHNSTON. 

A summer Sunday morning, 

July the twenty-first, 
In eighteen hundred sixty-one, 

The storm of battle burst. 

For many a year the thunder 
Had muttered deep and low, 

And many a year, through hope and fear, 
The storm had gathered slow. 

Now hope had fled the hopeful, 

And fear was with the past ; 
And on Manassas' cornfields 

The tempest broke at last. 

A wreath above the pine-tops, 

The booming of a gun ; 
A ripple on the cornfields, 

And the battle was begun. 

A feint upon our centre, 

While the foeman massed his might, 
For our swift and sure destruction, 

With his overwhelming "right." 



24 



MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

All the summer air was darkened 
With the tramping of their host ; 

All the Sunday stillness broken 
By the clamor of their boast. 

With their lips of savage shouting, 
And their eyes of sullen wrath, 

Goliath, with the weaver-beam, 
The champion of Gath. 

Are they men who guard the passes, 

On our " left" so far away? 
In thy cornfields, O Manassas ! 

Are they men who fought to-day ? 

Our boys are brave and gentle, 

And their brows are smooth and white 
Have they grown to men, Manassas, 

In the watches of a night? 

Beyond the grassy hillocks 

There are tents that glimmer white ; 
Beneath the leafy covert 

There is steel that glistens bright. 

There are eyes of watchful reapers 

Beneath the summer leaves, 
With a glitter as of sickles 

Impatient for the sheaves. 

They are men who guard the passes, 
They are men who bar the ford ; 

Stands our David at Manassas, 
The champion of the Lord. 



A BATTLE BALLAD. 

They are men who guard our altars, 
And beware, ye sons of Gath, 

The deep and deathful silence 
Of the lion in your path. 

Lo ! the foe was mad for slaughter, 
And the whirlwind hurtled on ; 

But our boys had grown to heroes, 
They were lions, every one. 

And they stood a wall of iron, 
And they shone a wall of flame, 

And they beat the baffled tempest 
To the caverns whence it came. 

And Manassas' sun descended 

On their armies crushed and torn, 
On a battle bravely ended, 
• On a nation grandly born. 

The laurel and the cypress, 

The glory and the grave, 
We pledge to thee, O Liberty ! 

The life-blood of the brave. 



2 5 



26 MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 



"OUR LEFT." 

(MANASSAS.) 

From dawn to dark they stood 
That long midsummer day, 

While fierce and fast 

The battle blast 
Swept rank on rank away. 

From dawn to dark they fought, 
With legions torn and cleft ; 

And still the wide 

Black battle-tide 
Poured deadlier on " Our Left." 

They closed each ghastly gap ; 

They dressed each shattered rank ; 

They knew — how well — 

That Freedom fell 
With that exhausted flank. 

" Oh, for a thousand men 
Like these that melt away !" 
And down they came, 
With steel and flame, 
Four thousand to the fray ! 

Right through the blackest cloud 
Their lightning path they cleft ; 



LITTLE GIFFEN. 27 

And triumph came 

With deathless fame 

To our unconquered "Left." 

Ye, of your sons secure, 
Ye, of your dead bereft, 
Honor the brave 
Who died to save 
Your all upon our " Left." 



LITTLE GIFFEN. 

Out of the focal and foremost fire, 
Out of the hospital walls as dire ; 
Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene, 
(Eighteenth battle, and he sixteen !) 
Spectre ! such as you seldom see, 
Little Giffen, of Tennessee ! 



"Take him and welcome !" the surgeons said ; 

Little the doctor can help the dead ! 

So we took him ; and brought him where 

The balm was sweet in the summer air ; 

And we laid him down on a wholesome bed — 

Utter Lazarus, heel to head ! 

And we watched the war with abated breath, — 
Skeleton Boy against skeleton Death. 
Months of torture, how many such? 
Weary weeks of the stick and crutch ; 



28 MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

And still a glint of the steel-blue eye 
Told of a spirit that wouldn't die, 

And didn't. Nay, more ! in death's despite 
The crippled skeleton "learned to write." 
Dear mother, at first, of course ; and then 
Dear captain, inquiring about the men. 
Captain's answer : of eighty-and-five, 
Giffen and I are left alive. 

Word of gloom from the war, one day ; 

Johnson pressed at the front, they say. 

Little Giffen was up and away ; 

A tear — his first — as he bade good-by, 

Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye. 

11 r 11 write, if spared !" There was news of the fight ; 

But none of Giffen. — He did not write. 

I sometimes fancy that, were I king 

Of the princely Knights of the Golden Ring, 

With the song of the minstrel in mine ear, 

And the tender legend that trembles here, 

I'd give the best on his bended knee, 

The whitest soul of my chivalry, 

For "Little Giffen," of Tennessee. 



THE SWORD IN THE SEA. 



THE SWORD IN THE SEA. 

The billows plunge like steeds that bear 
The knights with snow-white crests; 

The sea-winds blare like bugles where 
The Alabama rests. 

Old glories from their splendor-mists 

Salute with trump and hail 
The sword that held the ocean lists 

Against the world in mail. 

And down from England's storied hills, 

From lyric slopes of France, 
The old bright wine of valor fills 

The chalice of Romance. 

For here was Glory's tourney-field, 

The tilt-yard of the sea ; 
The battle-path of kingly wrath, 

And kinglier courtesy. 

And down the deeps, in sumless heaps, 

The gold, the gem, the pearl, 
In one broad blaze of splendor, belt 

Great England like an earl. 

And there they rest, the princeliest 

Of earth's regalia gems, 
The starlight of our Southern Cross, 

The sword of Raphael Semmes. 



29 



3° 



MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 



CANNON SONG. 

TO CAPTAIN E. A. DAWSON. 

Aha ! a song for the trumpet's tongue, 

For the bugle to sing before us, 
When our gleaming guns, like clarions, 

Shall thunder in battle chorus ! 
Where the rifles ring, where the bullets sing, 

Where the black bombs whistle o'er us, 
With rolling wheel and rattling peal 

We'll thunder in battle chorus ! 

CHORUS. 

With the cannon's flash and the cannon's crash, 

With the cannon's roar and rattle, 
Let Freedom's sons, with their shouting guns, 

Go down to their country's battle ! 

Their brassy throats shall learn the notes 

That make old tyrants quiver, 
Till the war is won or each Tyrrell gun 

Grows cold with our hearts forever. 
Where the laurel waves o'er our brothers' graves, 

Who have gone to their rest before us, 
Here's a requiem shall sound for them, 

And thunder in battle chorus ! 

With the cannon's flash, etc. 



" OR a pace:' 

By the light that lies in our Southern skies, 

By the spirits that watch above us ; 
By the gentle hands in our summer lands, 

And the gentle hearts that love us, 
Our fathers' faith let us keep till death, 

Their fame in its cloudless splendor, 
As men who stand for their mother-land, 

And die — but never surrender ! 

With the cannon's flash, with the cannon's crash, 

With the cannon's roar and rattle, 
Let Freedom's sons, with their gleaming guns, 

Go down to their country's battle ! 



3 1 



"ORA PACE." 

Ora Pace / Pray for Peace ! 
Till these times of tumult cease ! 
Ye with heavy hearts and eyes, 
Watchers as the war-clouds rise, 
Though the shadows still increase, 
Gentle spirits ! Pray for Peace ! 

Ora Pace ! Ye that lift 
The nation's weapons, keen and swift, 
Ere ye loose the thunder, pray- 
That the wrath may pass away ! 
Ere the lightnings ye release, 
Patriot statesmen, Pray for Peace ! 



32 MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS L YRICS. 

Ora Pace I Ye that stand 
The shield and summer of the land ; 
Though the blood is hot and high, 
Bounding for the battle-cry, 
Remember, boys, whose kiss ye bear, 
And pray for peace, ye sons of Prayer ! 

Ora Pace ! Who shall tread 

Our Lilies, when that prayer is said ? 

Dark may be the sullen tide 

Of the stranger's lust and pride, 

But, our God shall still increase 

The strength that strikes and prays for Peace. 



y 



THE RIVER. 

Hold to the giant river, 

Ye, with a giant claim ! 
Yours from the great All-Giver, 

Yours in Jehovah's name ! 
By fireside, field, and altar, 

By temple, by grove, by grave,. 
B*y the smiles and tears 
Of a hundred years, 
By the life- time toil of your pioneers 

And the life-blood of your braves. 

De Soto sleeps in its bosom, 

Yet the dreamer's dream was truth, 



VIRGINIA. 33 

And he left to your watch the waters 

Of the world's immortal youth ; 
Yours from the fount of story, 

Yours till oblivion's wave, 
By the deed of your day of glory, 

By the seal oi your Sidney's grave, 
For yourselves, for your sons, forever, 

And ever, to hold and to have : 
The broad and abounding river, 

Down to the salt sea wave ; 
While the waters flow, 
While the grasses grow, 
Till the last of your race lies cold and low, 

Or God forgets the brave ! 



VIRGINIA. 



Triple triumph to thy spears, 

Virginia ! 
Daughter of the cavaliers, 

Virginia ! 
Let the timbrel and the dance 
Tell of thine anointed lance, 
Teli of thy deliverance, 

Virginia ! 

On the shore and by the sea, 
Virginia ! 

Thou hast triumphed gloriously, 
Virginia ! 



y 



34 



MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

Loftier head of haughtier foe, 
Laid in dust of battle low, 
Never decked thy saddle-bow, 
Virginia ! 



Awful through thy blinding tears, 

Virginia ! 
Blazed the light of buried years, 

Virginia ! 
Spirits of the mighty dead 
Followed still thy battle tread, 
Followed where thy falchion led, 
Virginia ! 



Heart to heart, they smote again, 

Virginia ! 
The savage and the Saracen, 
Virginia ! 
Soul to soul, as son and sire, 
Sword of wrath and heart of fire, 
Swept to vengeance swift and dire, 
Virginia ! 



Mailed in thine immortal wrong, 

Virginia ! 
Let thy sorrows make thee strong, 

Virginia ! 
Clothe thee, quarter-deck to keel, 
Harness thee from head to heel, 
Massive oak and sheeted steel, 
Virginia ! 



THE GAP. 

Onward yet, thou heart of gold, 

Virginia ! 
First in freedom's fight of old, 

Virginia ! 
Forward yet ! the grace that flings 
The heart to death above a king's 
Shall follow where thy bugle sings, 
Virginia ! 



35 



THE GAP. 

(boonsboro' gap, or south mountain pass.) 

TO D. H. HILL. 

Prouder than Persia's noontide was 
The dawn that hurled yon bannered mass, 
The banded Orient, on the pass 
Barred by thine arm, Leonidas ! 

But prouder still the vestal lights 
Of glory on these vigil heights ; 
And proudest yet the hand that writes, 
Here wrestled Arthur and his Knights ! 



• 



36 



MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 



LABO R— S A C R I F I C E. 

WITH THE DEVICE OF A BULLOCK J FROM THE SEAL OF 
A SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN. 

That cream was of the kindliest strain 

That meadow ever drew 
From sunlight and the summer rain, 

From darkness and the dew ! 
That left no stain in yonder vein 
But Heaven's — the sapphire blue. 
That gentleman, we knew, 
So gentle and so true; 
A knight whose signet bore 
A "Bullock," and no more; 
A quaint device, by Sacrifice 
And Labor won of yore ! 

And matchless sweet the golden wheat 

That met and moulded him, 
A man complete from head to feet 

In grace of soul and limb ; 
That lent his gaze the lion's blaze, 
His smile — who smiles like him ? 
Ah ! tremulous and dim, 
Through tears we think of him, 
The knight whose signet bore 
That quaint device of "Sacrifice" 
And "Labor," and no more. 



LABOR— S A CRIFICE. 3 7 

Upon no statelier sight 

The circling sun hath smiled, 
Nor oak of loftier height 

Dropped shade so sweet and mild ; 
Where love came down like light, 
And happiness grew wild ! 

The sage, the little child, 
Peasant and prince, have smiled 
Around his knees who bore 
. The Bullock ; quaint device 
Of Toil and Sacrifice, 
Which all his fathers wore, 
Which he shall wear no more. 

For he is dead ! Beneath the tread 

Of battle, in the roar 
That rent the sod, his face to God, 

He went, and came no more ! 
The fragrance of the path he trod 
In sacrifice is o'er. 

Yet all the kindliest rays 
Of all the knightliest days 
Kindled forevermore, 
Around the cross he bore ; 
Around the quaint device 
Of Toil and Sacrifice 
That our great Bishop* wore. 

* Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott, of Georgia. 



3» 



J 



MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRLCS. 
OUR GREAT CAPTAIN. 

"STONEWALL" JACKSON. 

The shout of the battle hath fled, 

The flame of it fallen dim ; 
We are sick of the war, it is said, 

Weary of tales so grim. 
But to-night, and our captain lies dead ; 

To-night, and we think of him. 

Knight of the cloudless sun, 

Ithuriel of the spear, 
Whose touch was the foe undone, 

Whose name was a nation's cheer ; 
His voice and victory's — one, 

Vanished in silence here. 

But the flash of. a fusillade, 

In the gloom that hath lifted never, 
And our guide and our glory fade 

In the wilderness forever, 
Till we follow his smile to the shade 

Of the Tree, by the Eden river. 

In the shadows with no release 

From the sorrows that haunt us grim, 

Where our hopes at their fountain cease, 
And the light of the Heaven is dim, 

It is strength, it is hope, it is peace, 
It is triumph to think of him. 



ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON. 39 



ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON. 

SHILOH. 

His soul to God ! on a battle-psalm ! 

The soldier's plea to Heaven ! 
From the victor- wreath to the shining Palm : 
From the battle's core to the central calm, 

And peace of God in Heaven. 

Oh, Land ! in your midnight of mistrust 

The golden gates flew wide, 
And the kingly soul of your wise and just 
Passed in light from the house of dust 

To the Home of the Glorified. 



GRACIE, OF ALABAMA. 

[TO GENERAL R. H. CHILTON.] 

On, sons of mighty stature, 

And souls that match the best; — 

When nations name their jewels 
Let Alabama rest. 



4 o MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

Gracie, of Alabama ! 

'Twas on that dreadful day 
When howling hounds were fiercest, 

With Petersburg at bay. 

Gracie, of Alabama, 

Walked down the lines with Lee, 
Marking through mists of gunshot 

The clouds of enemy ; 

Scanning the Anaconda 
At every scale and joint ; 

And halting, glasses levelled 

At gaze on " Dead Man's Point." 

Thrice, Alabama's warning 

Fell on a heedless ear, 
While the relentless lead-storm, 

Converging, hurtled near ; 

Till straight before his chieftain, 
Without or sound or sign, 

He stood, a shield the grandest, 
Against the Union line : 

And then the glass was lowered, 
And voice that faltered not 

Said, in its measured cadence, 
"Why, Gracie, you'll be shot !" 

And Alabama answered : 

" The South will pardon me 

If the ball that goes through Gracie 
Comes short of Robert Lee !" 



LEE. 4I 

Swept a swift flash of crimson 

Athwart the chieftain's cheek, 
And the eyes whose glance was " knighthood" 

Spake as no king could speak. 

And side by side with Gracie 

He turned from shot and flame ; 
Side by side with Gracie 

Up the grand aisle of Fame. 



LEE. 

This wondrous valley ! hath it spells 

And golden alchemies, 
That so its chaliced splendor dwells 

In these imperial eyes? 

This man hath breathed all balms of light, 
And quaffed all founts of grace, 

Till Glory, on the mountain height, 
Has met him face to face. 

Ye kingly hills ! ye dimpled dells ! 

Haunt of the eagle — dove, 
Grant us your wine of woven spells 

To grow like him we love ! 



42 



MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 



"UNKNOWN." 

The prints of feet are worn away, 
No more the mourners come ; 

The voice of wail is mute to-day 
As his whose life is dumb. 

The world is bright with other bloom ; 

Shall the sweet summer shed 
Its living radiance o'er the tomb 

That shrouds the doubly dead ? 

Unknown ! Beneath our Father's face 

The star-lit hillocks lie ; 
Another rosebud ! lest His grace 

Forget us when we die. 



THE GRAYS AT HOME. 

Up the hill, mine honored Gray ! 
We are going home — " To stay !" 

Around the hill, below the heights, 
Cling the glooms and gleam the lights. 

Glamour of the evil eyes ! 
Spume of hate that never dies ! 



THE GRA YS AT HOME. 

Let the cauldron boil below ! 
Wish the world a fairer foe ! 

Balsam to our battle-scars 
Climbing nearer to the stars. 

Homeward with the rapture that 
Beached the ark on Ararat. 

All the ways of war and weather 
We have worn the harness leather. 

Days with never cymbal-beat, 
Save the music of thy feet. 

Nights with never star or guide, 
Save the glimmer of thy hide. 

Stained with all the tints of toil 
And "variations of the soil," 

Deeper tinct with every stain 

The tireless wine-press wrings from pain, 

Not the frosted hills display 
Richer dapple, oh, my Gray ! 

Not the vales at vintage hold 
Riper deeps of gloom and gold. 

Up the hill, oh, grace and speed, 
And power unplummeted of need ! 



43 



44 



MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

These have cheered the night agone, 
These are musical at dawn. 

Ringing to the bright'ning dome, 
Climbing upwards, onwards, home / 

Far above the cauldron's spume, 
With starry cross and stainless plume, 

We have shared the "corn" and heather, 
We are going home together. 

On thy crest this loving sign, 

Be my Lord's white mark on mine ! 



GRAY. 



Something so human-hearted 

In a tint that ever lies 
Where a splendor has just departed 

And a glory is yet to rise ! 

Gray in the solemn gloaming, 

Gray in the dawning skies ; 
In the old man's crown of honor, 

In the little maiden's eyes. 

Gray mists o'er the meadows brooding, 
Whence the world must draw its best ; 

Gray gleams in the churchyard shadows, 
Where all the world would "rest." 



HOLLAND. 

Gray gloom in the grand cathedral, 
Where the " Glorias" are poured, 

And, with angel and archangel, 
We wait the coming Lord. 

Silvery gray for the bridal, 

Leaden gray for the pall ; 
For urn, for wreath, for life and death, 

Ever the Gray for all. 

Gray in the very sadness 

Of ashes and sackcloth ; yea, 
While our raiment of beauty and gladness 

Tarries, our tears shall stay ; 
And our souls shall smile through their sadness, 

And our hearts shall wear the Gray. 



45 



HOLLAND. 



Brave Holland ! of the broad sea nursed, 
Where the blue billows roll and burst 
From the bleak, bitter north. In thee, 
Star-crowned with peace and liberty, 
We hail " the Venus of the Sea !" 

The heart and home of wealth and Worth, 

The Eden glory of the earth ; 

A sea of billowy verdure drest 

In rippling green, with lily crest. 

In all our woes across the sea, 

Bright Holland, Georgia cries to thee ! 



46 MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

Scourged by a more than bitter tide, 
With the black billows howling wide ; 
Wrecked to her naked soil and sky, 
Reft of her all but memory ! 
Dear sister of like sorrows, we 
Turn in our wasting woes to thee ! 

Of old, thy virgin liberty 

Returned, a vestal, to the sea ! 

And ours ? Her bleeding feet impress 

Again the savage wilderness ! 

Blest if the desert's depths have wrought 

For Freedom as thy deluge fought ! 

Teach us to front the tempest's gloom 
With the long waves of light and bloom ; 
To plant, where flashed the flying foam, 
The constant altar-fires of home, 
And the shrill sea-blast's wave prolong 
In shepherd's bell and reaper's song ! 
To rear, by grace of grass and trees, 
Of milky herds and honey-bees, 
A second Holland from the seas. 



GEORGIA. 47 



GEORGIA. 

Between her rivers and beside the sea, 

My mother-land ! What fairer land can be? 

The lyric rapture in her leaping rills, 
The crown-imperial on her purple hills. 

Her lips are pure that never breathed a curse ; 
Her hands are white before the universe. 

Behold the witness of the King of Peace 
Clear, in the splendor of her dew-lit fleece. 

And lo ! the midnight of her shrouded mine 
Garners the radiance of the years to shine. 

Yea ! the swart Gnome that bides his time below 
Shall rise at last in full regalia glow ! 

And the great Alchemist shall teach the Sun 
That Earth's great gloom and Life's great light are 
one ! 

Oh, sweetest souls that ever rose by prayer 
White from the furnace-dungeon of despair ! 

That wrought new grace from battle's chaos-mould, 
And reared new shrines from ashes not yet cold. 



48 MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

Not cold ! — from flames the strangest that have given 
From all this world, an altar-smoke to Heaven ! 

Crowned on the cross, above high-fetter line, 
They smile on hate with Love's own smile divine. 

Prouder than hills that plume thy star-ward crest, 
Sweeter than dales that dimple at thy breast. 

Richer than Rome ! when God's great chariot rolls, 
Imperial Georgia! count thy children's souls. 



THE CONSTITUTION. 

"le roi est mort !" 

"Awake the King !" the warder said ; 
"The night is past, the tempest fled. 
Awake the King; the world would shine 
Once more beneath his eyes benign." 

" The storm that rocked our castle's base 
Brought heavy slumber to his Grace, 
And light and peace and laughing skies 
Shall wake him — " when the dead arise. 

Ah ! deadlier than the tempest's peal, 
In coward hands the traitor steel ! 
The Lord's anointed they that cried 
"All hail !" have smitten, that he died. 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS. 

They drank his cup, they brake his bread, 
And in his slumber smote him dead, — 
His loyal Lords ! — to bear through time 
The crimson of that banner crime ! 

On him all sacred seals were set ; 
In him all power and mercy met ; 
Dead ! and what kings shall rise and reign 
Ere we behold his like again ! 



49 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS. 

STONE MOUNTAIN. 

Forged in the furnace of the world's mid-fire ; 
Smit of all scourges of the fierce and dire ; 
Worn of all waters ; the volcano's core 
Enters the Heavens at last, triumphant evermore. 

Crowned with the stars, a cenotaph to stand 
Till the last flood of fire shall oversweep the land. 
Kindred to all that, clasped by sod or shroud, 
Kindles the crystal that shall cleave the cloud. 

How vile to this the tyrant-triumph hid 
In the worn Sphinx, the wasted pyramid ! 
How poor and pale all pomps the world has known 
To this unblazoned shaft of Georgian stone ! 
5 



5 o MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

Whose name and fame shall front the ages with 
Thine awful grace, imperial monolith ! 
With fire as central as the planet's own, 
And soul as steadfast as the granite stone? 



Our Athos-Alexander, carven on 
The unbowed head of mourning Macedon, 
With crest of Memnon, by the choral seas, 
Hymettus-voiced, with silvery symphonies. 

Kindred to all that, swathed by sod or shroud, 
Kindles the crystal that shall cleave the cloud ; 
Whose mighty work salutes the sun at last, 
The rock cathedral of the fiery Past ! 

Shrining the princely dust with sacramental care, 
And kindling darkened aisles with censer, song, and 

prayer ; 
Touching old banners with their battle-glow, 
And the worn bugles till their triumphs blow ; 
Lending sweet music to the tears that shed 
The tenderest splendor o'er our Freedom's dead, 
And clarion clangors to the starward arch, 
Where her gray cohorts rally to the march; 
Blending all glories of the arch of light, 
To robe, and crown, and consecrate the Right ! 

A kingly vigil, where enchantment lies 
On the pale lips of peerless chivalries ! 
A godlike deed, to bid these charnel gates 
Blaze with the resurrection of the States ! 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS. 

May we not mate the mountain and the man, — 
The granite dome and the great Georgian? 
Kindred to all that, clasped by sod or shroud, 
Kindles the crystal that shall cleave the cloud. 

Their pathos one ! — the melancholy grace 
Of Sinai's shadow on the prophet's face, 
When the lone summit of the thunders saw 
The broken people in the broken law, 
And the last splendor of the lightning fell 
On shattered tablets and lost Israel ! 

One in their grandeur ! Who shall bid apart 

These stalwart coils that clasp our Georgia's heart? 

Or crown this majesty that meets the sky 

With other light of immortality 

Than his, whose voice in Freedom's name hath given 

From all this earth the noblest plea to Heaven ? 



5'. 



52 



MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 



"CORDELIA! CORDELIA!" 

(IN MEMORIAM, APRIL 26, 1 865.) 

TO GENERAL ROBERT TOOMBS. 

The light hath lost its summer tints, 
The world with woe hath whitened since 
The shrouded April, long ago, 
That laid our Lily in the snow ! 

The star that trembled down the west 
Returns not from its quiet rest, 
And if the dawn awake the flowers, 
They shine for other eyes than ours ! 

And yet while grace of deed and thought 
Shall linger where her hands have wrought, 
We see the April of her eyes, 
And wait her summer to arise. 

Twin-born with liberty, she died 
In the great battle, by her side, 
Mute, save the proud appeal that lies 
In silent lips and shrouded eyes. 

The white palms crossed in perfect rest, 
The Book of God upon her breast, 
In witness of the good she sought, 
In token that her task is wrought. 



ARTHUR, THE GREAT KING. 53 



ARTHUR, THE GREAT KING. 

TO JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

There be of warders on the wall 
Have heard by night his bugle-call, 
And watchers ere the dawn unclose 
Whose very tears are tint with rose. 

As on some widowed neck the woe 
Of mourning veils a whiter snow 
Than April's first of whiteness, so 
Across our path of murk and wrath 
The clouds unclasp at times, and show 
The vigil-gleam at " Camelot !" 

His regal front is seamed and gaunt, 
His kingly curls are grizzled, scant, 
His war-steed worn to Rosinante ! 

There's mist upon his knightly mail, 

And dust on every golden scale 

Of the great " Dragon," crest to tail ! 

Like moonlit mist on midnight snow, 
The sun of battle smoulders low ! 
Alas ! the King at Camelot ! 



54 



MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

But on his sword nor mould nor loss 
From stainless steel to starry cross ! 
Ye wist, ye early at the tomb, 
The whiteness that is like his plume ! 
Beloved of the morning-star, 
Your eyes have seen " Excalibar !" 

And ye that in the temples pray, 

Have witnessed, when the aisles are gray, 

A sudden rapture cleave the pane 

Beyond the oriel's glory-stain, 

That lingered in the holy place, 

The "iris" of an angel's grace ! 

Then he whose head it kindled on 

Shined like Uriel of the sun ! 

And were his face the Parian stone, 

And were his smile King Arthur's own, 

Of all that met his kindling eyes 

Not one should marvel did he rise ! 

" These little ones !" — these lambs that bear 
The dew-cross of our Christ ; His care 
These lilies, more than Eden blest, — 
"These little ones" have touched his hem, 
Have looked upon his diadem, 
Have heard his footsteps walk with them, 
And bring us, from the shrouded isle 
Where his gr.eat glory bides the while, 
The very sunshine of his smile ! 

And 0?u I know, whose sabre shone 
The battle's eye-light years agone, 



THE CAUCASIAN. 

Who wears upon his folded hands 
The welcome of the angel lands, 
And bears upon his smiling lips 
The seal no shadow can eclipse, 
Who waits me as the days expire 
With Arthur's soul of love and fire ! 



55 



THE CAUCASIAN. 

Chained to the icy peak, 
Rent by the vulture's beak, 

Scourged of the bitter brine ; 
Brother of Caucasus, 
The gods have wrought on us 

Horrors to rival thine ! 

In the wilderness wreck we stand, 
In the depths of the desolate land, 

To our dead in their graves we cry 
" Brothers ! that rest in peace 
In the land where the wicked cease, 

Is it better to live or die?" 

And our dead from their graves reply 
"The Merciful moves on high. 

The arm of his strength is nigh, 
In the sorrows that learn of Faith 
To smile in the eye of Death. 

It is braver to live than to die !" 



5 6 MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 



UNDER THE WILLOWS. 

Brave "ends" may consecrate a cruel story, 

And crown a dastard deed ; 
Brave hearts are laurelled with eternal glory 

That held another creed. 

Who knows the end ? or in what record written 

The crowned results abide? 
The volume closed not with an Abel smitten 

Or Christ the crucified. 

How poor and pale from yonder heights of Heaven 

Our Caesar's pomp appears 
To those who wear the purple robes of Stephen, 

Or Mary's crown of tears ! 

So let us watch, a single pale star keeping 

Its vigil o'er the tide. 
No truth is lost for which the true are weeping, 

Nor dead for which they died. 



ATLANTIS. 



57 



ATLANTIS. 

Down in the sunless deeps, 
Our lost Atlantis sleeps ! 

Not as she sank below 
The Deluge long ago, 

A star for the bridal drest, 
The glory of all the West, 

But white in her shrouded rest, 
And a chain across her breast. 

Shall we weep while the waters roar, 
Or work with the madrepore, 

With the nursing fires below, 

And the cradling earthquake's throe, 

To lift to the light again 
Atlantis, from shroud and chain 

Slow dawning out of her grave, 
Slow widening over the wave, 

From the islet's slender spear 
To the bloom of a hemisphere 



5 8 MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

Whose hills salute the morn 
With the pomp of palm and corn, 

Whose verdurous valleys shine 
With the light of the oil and wine? 

Ah ! better than yonder hind, 
Dazzled by triumph blind, 

Whose share hath furrowed the sod 
To hillocks that cry to God, 

Whose scythe, as it sweeps the grain, 
Shines with an evil stain, 

To toil in the sunless deeps, 
Where our lost Atlantis sleeps ; 

To tarry a thousand years 

Till her Angel of Light appears. 



DIXIE. 59 



DIXIE. 

AIR "ANNIE LAURIE." 

Oh ! Dixie's homes are bonnie, 

And Dixie's hearts are true ; 
And 'twas down in dear old Dixie 

Our life's first breath we drew; 

And there our last we'd sigh, 
And for Dixie, dear old Dixie, 

We'll lay us down and die. 

No fairer land than Dixie's 

Has ever seen the light ; 
No braver boys than Dixie's 

To stand for Dixie's right; 

With hearts so true and high, 
And for Dixie, dear old Dixie, 

To lay them down and die. 

Oh ! Dixie's vales are sunny, 

And Dixie's hills are blue ; 
And Dixie's skies are bonnie, 

And Dixie's daughters, too, 

As stars in Dixie's sky; 
And for Dixie, dear old Dixie, 

We'd lay us down and die. 



y 



60 MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

No more upon the mountain, 

No longer by the shore, — 
The trumpet song of Dixie 

Shall shake the world no more ; 
For Dixie's songs are o'er, 

Her glory gone on high, 
And the brave who bled for Dixie 

Have laid them down to die. 



LOYAL. 

[TO GENERAL CLEBURNE.] 

The good Lord Douglas — dead of old- 

In his last journeying 
Wore at his heart, encased in gold, 

The heart of Bruce, his king, 

Through Paynim lands to Palestine — 
For so his troth was plight — 

To lay that gold on Christ his shrine, 
Let fall what peril might. 

By night and day, a weary way 

Of vigil and of fight, 
Where never rescue came by day, 

Nor ever rest by night. 

And one by one the valiant spears 
Were smitten from his side, 



LOYAL. 6! 

And one by one the bitter tears 
Fell for the brave that died ; 

Till fierce and black around his track 

He saw the combat close, 
And counted but the single sword 

Against uncounted foes. 

He drew the casket from his breast, 

He bared his solemn brow ! 
Oh, foremost of the kingliest ! 

Go "first in battle" now! 

Where leads my Lord of Bruce, the sword 

Of Douglas shall not stay ! 
Forward ! We meet at Christ His feet 

In Paradise, to-day ! 

The casket flashed ; the battle clashed, 

Thundered, and rolled away ; 
And dead above the heart of Bruce 

The heart of Douglas lay ! 

Loyal ! Methinks the antique mould 

Is lost, or theirs alone 
Who sheltered Freedom's heart of gold, 

Like Douglas, with their own ! 



62 MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 



THE HIELAND LASS AT LUCKNOW. 

" DINNA YE HEAR THE PIBROCH?" 

Not alone, not alone upon Lucknow's moan 

The midnight of blackness fell; 
Not alone, not alone by her shattered stone, 

Stood Sorrow, the sentinel. 
Not a heart but beat to her watcher's feet, 

Under that awful sky, 
And ne'er a hearth on the darkened earth 

But blazed at the slogan's cry. 

For the Campbells came like the rush of flame, 

With that clamor so wild and high, 
That its clarion breath in the ears of Death 

Might have trembled with victory. 
Here's a brimming can to the Highlandman, 

And the Bengal bolt he hurled ! 
Here's a brimming glass to the Hieland lass 

Who echoed it round the world ! 



HOXOR THE BRAVED 63 



"HONOR THE BRAVE." 

Up in the Indian hills 

Of the Cutchee tribe 'tis said 

That when a chieftain dies 

They bind his wrist with thread : 

Green for the very brave ; 
But for the bravest, red. 

One time in Indian wars, 

A squad of Englishmen 
Charged sixty Cutcheears 

So valiantly that, when 
The fight was done, of ten, not one 

Ever came back again. 

Long after, when the winds 

Their skeletons had kissed, 
A squad of Englishmen 

Looked up their missing list, 
And found them dead, with each a thread 

Of scarlet on his wrist. 



64 MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 



BATTLE FOR THE RIGHT. 

" Oh ! for the battle where all in all 
Is placed on the perilous cast." 

" Marks of Burhamville." 

Then smite, if thy foes are 'round thee, 

And thou battiest for the right ; 
Though the laurel hath ne'er crowned thee, 

Thou art victor if thou smite ! 
But not in thy dreams Elysian 

Thou speedest the battle on, 
Not in the sleeper's vision 

Is the victory lost or won. 

Each blow for the truth thou givest 

Is a triumph in the war, 
Each hour that thou truly livest 

Thou art truly Conqueror. 
Each night of thy sinless slumber 

That hails the setting sun, 
Thy destiny shall number 

As one brave victory won. 



"SANS CHANGE." 65 



"SANS CHANGE." 



FROM THE SEAL-RING OF BISHOP B- 



An earl of England hath as " crest" 
An Infant in an Eagle's nest; 

And (hid to heraldry) the strange 
Yet simple legend, " Without change." 

No herald ; yet I hold amiss 
The reading that traverses this. 

No doubt the Eagle caught away 
The Infant from its nurse that day, 

And felt new softness at the touch, 
Pervade his fiery spirit ; much 

As might the Lion that relents, 
A Lamb, to Una's innocence. 

And well, methinks, the nursling might 
From the stern rapture of that flight 

Some token of the eyrie bring 
In dauntless eye and tireless wing ; 
6* 



66 MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

And so through annals richly stored, 
Of gown, of mitre, and of sword, 

Transmit, "unchanged," to all his race 
The Eagle's fire, the Infant's grace. 



AGONISTES. 

Between the pillars let him stand ! 
The fireless eyes, the fettered hand, 
The Lion-Fox that vexed the land ! 

By Baal ! but the sport was rare 
To take the cunning in our snare, 
The Lion, by his yellow hair ! 

The world grows weary of the jest, 
And there are shadows in the west ; 
Between the pillars let him rest ! 

Perhaps to dream, as captives will, 
That on Philistia's sacred hill 
His feet of triumph trample still. 

To-morrow, — be the darkness short !■ 
Refreshed in rage, our gentle court 
Shall bait the Titan for our sport ! 

So Peace, from pinnacle to porch, 
With naked bone or blazing torch 
Never more to smite or scorch ! 



DIOGENES. 67 

And there was peace ; and we have read 
The simple prayer the captive said, 
The blind man as he bowed his head ; 

And when the voice of other wail 
Is still in story, let the tale 
Of Agonistes turn us pale. 



DIOGENES. 

He may have been a worthy wight 
Who mocked the sun with candle-light, 

As seeking in that foolish way, 
An honest man in open day ; 

But who has heard of one of these 
Revealed unto Diogenes? 

I think his lanthorn lacked alone 
Some honest motions of his own ! 

The man with little love shall find 
But little loving in mankind ; 

And one of feeble honor can 

By no means find an honest man ! 

To win the Indies' wealth, lay out 
The Indies' worth, or thereabout. 



6& MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 



"BARRY" OF ST. BERNARD. 

Twelve thousand feet, straight up the sky ! 

Six thousand years of sleet ! 
Strange eyrie of humanity, 

With Europe at its feet ! 

How many a year the glacier, 

Slow gliding, shall not tell, 
Since storms that launch the avalanche 

Have shouted as it fell. 
There war's records rest in cloven crest 

And splintered pinnacle. 

How many years, in deadliest wrath 

Of Roman and of Frank, 
The red high-tide of murder hath 

Smitten this mountain's flank ! 

And this poor dog, his kennel, ice, — 
Ringed by the double strife, — 

In his sublime self-sacrifice 

Stands staunch for human life ! 

Lead out your kings ! an even start 

For Glory's last reward ! 
Your Hannibal, your Bonaparte, 

Your Caesar, evil-starred, 
And here's my "vote," with all my heart, 

For "Barry" of Bernard. 



THE PRISONER AT GLATZ. 69 

Climb the fierce legions as of old 

Storm swept and battle riven ! 
And as the foremost hearts fall cold 
The Alps, by all their height, uphold 

A dog, the nearest Heaven ! 



THE PRISONER AT GLATZ. 

FROM THE LIFE OF FREDERICK WILLIAM III., OF PRUSSIA. 

One in his palace : One at the bars 
Of a dungeon, under the Alpine stars ; 
Doomed ! and never hath dungeon's scope 
Closed on a darker farewell to hope. 

Years ! and ever that icy gleam ; 
Years ! and only the eagle's scream, 
Piercing the storm in its sunward flight, 
Hath cheered his soul at that awful height. 

He hath barred his soul at a deadlier height 
With icier bonds, but they melt to-night. 

Not for the hopes that have vanished dim ; 

Not for the pang of the fettered limb ; 

Other than anguish has melted him, 

That fell with a light from the starry dome 

On a single line in an ancient tome, 

" In the time of thy trouble, call thou on Me ; 

And, lo ! my love shall deliver thee!" 

And his soul is bowed like a bended knee. 



7 o MARTIAL AND CHIVALROUS LYRICS. 

And his tears are wept from a heart as full 
As the night of stars, with the beautiful 
Child-like trust in the Merciful. 

One in his palace — the balm of night, 

With the beautiful sleep, hath fled his sight, 

Sick and faint with the woe and weight 

Of the golden thorns that crown the great — 

Moans, as the stricken who moan for light 

In the dark " mid-watch," and at dawn, for night 

"All my realm for the sweet release 

From a monarch's pain to a peasant's peace !" 

A soft step stole through the silken gloom, 
A sweet voice read from "ancient tome" — 
Sweeter sounds may not lull the sense — 
Of the pitying love and the innocence 
Of Christ ; and there came the sweep 
Of angel pinions, and brought him sleep ! 

One in his palace, the dawn astir, 
Saith to his sweet-voiced Comforter : 

" All my realm by the east and west, 

All my glory, hath never blessed 

My soul like this great crown-jewel Rest I 



"Tell me now of the heaviest woe 

That dwells to-day with my deadliest foe ; 

" For, as the Lord hath regarded me, 
My soul would pardon mine enemy." 



"FELIX." 71 

And the soft voice answered, "The sorrow that's 
Under the icy stars, at Glatz /' ' 

Aye ! There are pinions of farther flight 
Than the eagle's scream or the Alpine height 
To answer the captive's call to-night ! 

Mercy / — waiting, through all our years, — 
Waiting one signal, one summons, Tears ! 



FELIX." 



There is an ancient moral, 
Whose pith I thus convey, — 

Who slumbers on his laurel 
Was vanquished yesterday. 

Though greener fields may brighten 
Than yet the sun hath known \ 

Though whiter harvests whiten 
Than ever seed were sown ; 

Above the breast of summer, 
The thunder-bolt may burst ; 

And around the sheaves of harvest 
The winter gales are nursed. 

Life's loftiest triumph trembles 
Beneath the lightest march, — 

Till Death, that carves the keystone 
Writes felix on the arch. 



SONGS OF HOME. 



7$ 



A SONG FOR THE ASKING. 

(to r. n. t.) 

A song ! What songs have died 

Upon the earth, 
Voices of Love and Pride— 

Of Tears and Mirth? 
Fading as hearts forget, 

As shadows flee ! 
Vain is the voice of song, 
And yet 
I sing to thee ! 

A song ! What ocean shell 

Were silent long, 
If in thy touch might dwell 

Its all of song ? 
A song ? Then near my heart 

Thy cheek must be, 
For, like the shell, it sings — 
Sweet Heart — 
To Thee, of Thee ! 



75 



7 6 



SONGS OF HOME. 



TO ROSALIE. 

How shall I sing to thee? 
What shall the measure be, 
Star of my reverie, 
Loveliest Rosalie, 

Purest of Pearls? 
•Smooth as thy forehead fair? 
Sweet as thine eyelids are? 

Soft as thy curls? 

As from the starry vines 
Of the white jessamines, 
When the first planet shines, 

Only at even, 
Incense, the wanton day 
Vainly would woo away, 
Freed from the bending spray, 

Rises to Heaven. 

As in the forest dim, 
Cradled in mossy rim, 
Murmurs the fountain's hymn, 

Seeking no river ; 
Lulling the lily's sleep, 
Watching the shadows creep, 

And the stars quiver ; 
Such should my measure be, 



AN APRIL MORNING. 77 

Such were my minstrelsie, 
Maid of my reverie 
Sacred and sweet to thee, 
Or silent forever. 



AN APRIL MORNING. 

A deeper azure where the clouds are flying 

Along the upper sky, 
A softer shadow where the leaves are lying 

Our forest pathway by, 
A sweeter murmur in the south winds sighing, 

Tell us the spring is nigh. 

The blue-bird flits, and coos the ring-dove tender 

Amid the young green leaves ; 
Mansions of mist and silver, white and slender, 

The shy wood-spider weaves ; 
Swingeth the swallow to his old home under 

The unforgotten eaves. 

Its bridal wreaths, with starry gems of yellow, 

The jasmine's stores unfold, 
Adown the tresses of the trembling willow 

Dropping its bells of gold ; 
Fit tracery to deck the perfumed pillow, 

Where Love's young dreams are told. 

A thousand forms, like frolic children hiding, 
Challenge the laughing showers, 
7* 



78 



SONGS OF HOME. 



Watching the flight of pearly clouds and chiding 

The treasure- laden hours; 
A thousand forms of untold beauty biding 

Amid the unborn flowers. 

A thousand forms, and not in nature only, 

The warm spring showers unfold, 
Another mission, pure and calm and holy, 

The voice of spring has told, 
Waking some joy in souls long sad and lonely, 

Some hope in hearts long cold. 

Some light from sunlight may our sadness borrow, 
Some strength from bright young wings, 

Some hope from brightening seasons, when each morrow 
A lovelier verdure brings ; 

Some softened shadow of remembered sorrow 
From the calm depths of springs. 

Blend thy blest visions with the sleep that cumbers 

The dull, cold earth so long; 
Bring bloom and fragrance to the flow' ret's slumbers, 

And bid our hearts be strong ; 
Breathe thine own music through our spirit's numbers, 

Season of light and song. 



TWILIGHT ON " TORCH HILL." 79 



TWILIGHT ON "TORCH HILL." 

It is eve at our eyrie ; the river 
Falls dim in its tremulous gaze; 

There's a mantle of mist and the quiver 
Of stars through the violet haze. 

Soft twilight ! the far silent city 
Sleeps, veiled in the valley beneath, 

Eclipsed by the flash of this pretty 

Bright "ruby-throat"* here on his wreath. 

Shall I try, ere the daylight is over, 
So high from its. dust and its din, 

How much of a "town" I can cover 
With the leaf of a jessamine? 

All the life and the light of the city 
Shall I daintily hide from my sight, 

With its sorrow that weeps, and the pity 
That walks with the angels to-night ? 

Sweet mercies that shadow me ! Never ! 

Lest the soul in my body should die, 
Ere the sparkle fades out of the river, 

Or the light from the violet sky. 

■ The ruby-throated humming-bird, avant-courier of the stars. 



So SONGS OF HOME. 



DO THEY MISS ME AT HOME?' 

" The world is not all so dark 
But a smile can make it sweet." 

Tennyson. 

A question that betrays 
The answer ere it come, 

For that "I miss" conveys 
That I am missed at home. 

For so the world is full 
Of call that answers call, 

Along the wires that pull 
Both ways or not at all. 



AMONG THE BIRDS. 81 



AMONG THE BIRDS. 

We built a nest among the birds 

Now many Mays ago ; 
And we have heard a many a word 

That sang, by building so. 

And times when dew is on the day, 

And starlight in the trees, 
We meet and warn the mists away 

With little lays like these : 

A birdie tells of dimpled dells 
That blushed in far-off springs ; 

And many an April blooms and thrills 
With rapture while she sings. 

A birdie coos of light and shade 
The summers brought our nest, 

Of violets born, and lilies laid 
Where lilies love to rest. 

A birdie carols : Day's decline 
Restores the dawn's caress ; 

And autumn pours a richer wine 
Than April's tenderness. 



82 SONGS OF HOME. 

A birdie says : The bitter days 

May blow till they expire ; 
The winds but raise our censer blaze 

And waft its incense higher f 

The birdies sing : The bright shells bring 

No song from all the sea ; 
The close cheek and the clasping hand 

Make life's whole melody. 



"IN MAMRE." 

Do you ever think when your Eden-tree 

Is flourishing wide and green, 
With friendships thicker than fruits of gold, 

And love with its flowers between, 
How many beautiful souls may be 

That your soul hath never seen ? 
And how much "loving" your heart could hold 
Were the blossoms silver, the apples gold, 

And your heart an evergreen ? 

In a world so wide there are nooks to hide, 

And shadows to veil the sweet ; 
And there are the wise with unseeing eyes, 

And the swift with unheeding feet. 
Happier we, were our Eden-tree 

A tent in the desert's heat, 
Who hold that the very angel who spoke 



IDYL. S 3 

To Abraham, under the Mamre oak, 
May be the next we meet ! 

'Tis a pleasant thought at the eventide, 

When a glory looks down on our prayers, 
That we have not mocked in the days of our pride 
The meanest pilgrim whose dust may hide 

An "angel unawares !" 
And a beautiful hope, as the night unrolls 

Her raiment of rest serene, 
That we are nearer the beautiful souls 

That our souls have never seen. 



IDYL. 

(to m. n. t.) 



I. 

A vision which I had of late, 
By the orchard's lattice gate, 
Let this simple song relate ! 

Vision of a little girl, 

With a cheek of peach and pearl, 

And the promise of a curl ! 

Daintily in white arrayed, 
Borne by Ethiopian maid, 
Blending well with light and shade. 



g 4 SONGS OF HOME. 

Dimpled hand on dusky neck, 
Ebony with silver fleck, 
'Twixt a turban and a check ! 

By the cedar's scented gloom, 

By the violet's perfume, 

By the jasmine's golden bloom, 

By the graceful hawthorn tree, 
By the stately hickory, 
Pausing for a kiss from me ! 

Melting where the sunlight shines, 
On the blossomed nectarines, 
Melting down the orchard lines. 



II. 

Melts, but bids before me rise 
A wiser pair of wider eyes, 
In a wide world of surprise, 

And a world of rapture swells 
In her accent as she tells 
All the legends of our dells. 

Where the wild bee builds her cells, 
Where the humming-birdie dwells, 
Where the squirrel drops the shells ! 

Voice, by soul of music stirred, 
Eloquent in tone and word, 
Mocks the very mocking-bird. 



IDYL. 

And she knows the way of fruit, 
All the tricks of bud and shoot, 
All the secrets of the root. 

Much that wiser folk call weeds 
Her wide horticulture heeds; 
Boundless her delight in seeds. 

Leave her to her slender hoe, 
Let the seasons come and go, 
Let the flowers and maiden grow. 

III. 

Another Presence ! bright, yet pure, 
With mien more modest than demure. 
Not our little maiden, sure ? 

Yes ! by dimpled cheek and chin, 
Violet eyes, and velvet skin, 
'Tis our "Summer-child" again ! 

'Mid the roses she hath wrought — 

'Mid the lilies till she caught 

Health and grace in form and thought. 

Greet her, all ye clustered blooms ! 
Apples, peaches, pears, and plums, 
Greet your sweetest as she comes ! 

By the cedar's scented breath, 

By the violets underneath, 

By the jasmine's golden wreath. 



85 



86 SONGS OF NOME. 

Crown her with your fragrant hands, 
All bright things from all bright lands, 
Crown your brightest, where she stands, 

By the graceful hawthorn tree, 
By the stately hickory, 
Pausing for a kiss from me. 



TO THE LITTLE ROSALIE. 

(MRS. ROBERT OBER.) 

A little leaf from the rose's heart, 

A little drop of pearl, 
To write a little bit of a rhyme 

For a little bit of a girl ! 
Bright as a little humming-bird, 

Sweet as a honey-bee, 
That all who sing to the flowers may sing 

To the little Rosalie ! 

The violet's dyes are in her eyes, 

Its softest velvet in 
The dimples, the dimples about her cheeks, 

The dimple upon her chin ! 
Ah ! well of the little humming-bird, 

Ah ! well of the little bee, 
To sing, to sing to as sweet a thing 

As the little Rosalie ! 



"MOTHER'S WORK." 87 

We think, we think of the starward palms 

Over the Orient seas, 
We drink, we drink of the blended balms 

From the bright Hesperides. 
We ask, we ask of the golden hours, 

Of blossom, and bird, and tree, 
A little lyric of stars and flowers 

For the little Rosalie ! 



"MOTHER'S WORK." 

Darning stockings 
For restless feet, 
Scrubbing faces 
To lily-sweet ! 
Teaching Bible 

And catechism, 
Soothing bruises 

And healing schism. 

Smooth and smoother, 

Linger nor jerk ; 
That's our mother — 
The woman's work ! 

Raising roses, 

Burying smarts, 
Hiving sunshine 

Under our hearts ! 



SONGS OF HOME. 

Bravest spirit 

Beneath the dome ! 
Dastards falter 

When she says " Come !" 
Smooth and smoother, 

" Nor haste nor rest !" 
Beautiful mother, 

Whom God hath blest. 

Tender, most tender ! 

Child, take heed ! 
Rare her splendor 

Of thought and deed. 
Mild as moonlight 
In softest quiver, 
To shine with the stars 
Forever and ever ! 

Smooth and smoother — 

When life hath flown — 
The wings of "Mother" 
Still woo our own. 



GROUP OF DUCKLINGS. 89 



GROUP OF DUCKLINGS. 

Ducklings, six of the downiest 

That a duck could hatch if she did her best, 

Or a painter paint at his creamiest. 

Of the richest and roliest-poliest ; 

First choice Frank's ! and the present quest 

Of Frank's forefinger "the prettiest 1" 

Round and round, as a hawk that eyes 
Ducklings, six of the dumpling size; 
Each so suitable — still she flies. 

Ducklings, six, and one for dinner ! 
But which? so hovers the dainty sinner, 
Nor fills the hollow that acheth in her. 

" This is the prettiest — brownie-white ! 
Except this yellow one on the right — 
I mean the left — with a fly in sight." 

"The one that scampers! The one that's still! 
The one- afloat, with dripping bill. 
Prettiest, washed and had his fill ! 
But hungry Top-knot's prettier still !" 

" This one ! after the bug. The other, 
Watching at once the bug and his brother !" 
" Which is the prettiest ?' ' " Ask their 7nother /' ' 
8* 



9° 



SONGS OF HOME. 

Puzzled Frank ! I know a nest, 

And a mother too of the wisest, best, 

Who could not tell, and who would not test, 

For the wide world at its happiest, 

Which of her d — arlings she loves the best. 



"WHIPPOORWILL." 

Whip Poor Will ! Was there ever heard 

Such a blood-thirsty, slanderous, scandalous bird ! 

Under the window so slyly to creep, 

And whistle "come whip him" while Will's asleep. 

It's a bird of darkness, and not of day, 

That whistles a hint that he dare not say. 

Whip Poor Will ! Why, what has he done ? 

Has he found your eggs, ma'am, and broken one? 

Has he torn his jacket, or fought at play, 

Or missed his lesson, or ran away, 

Or broke a tumbler, or scratched the chairs, 

Or choked at table, or spoke at prayers ? 

No, Willie's a boy that's nice and neat, 
And Willie's a boy that's bright and sweet ; 
He's quiet at home and he's quick at school, 
And he never breaks, if he knows, the rule ; 
And I really think it were wondrous silly 
For nothing at all to whip poor Willie ! 



THE ECHO STORY. 9I 

But, Whippoorwill, if you've really seen 

Another Willie that's bad and mean, 

And you think you ought, and think 'twill "pay," 

To whip poor Willie, why whip away. 

And so good-by to your birdship till 

There's more occasion to whip our Will ! 



THE ECHO STORY. 

This is a rhyme that our poet writ, 

Sitting at peace one day, 
With his warring done, and his rifle-gun 

Bracketted away. 

A little lad in the curly grace 

Of summers that numbered three, 

With a wrathful trace on his rosy face, 
Stood at his mother's knee. 

"Mother, get me a rifle-gun, 

With a bayonet keen and bright ; 

There's a fellow that hides in the hills in front, 
And him I am bound to fight ! • 

'■ A fellow that hoots like a hooting owl, 

And mocks like a mocking-bird ; 
A rascal that calls me the meanest names 

That ever a fellow heard. 



9 2 



SOAGS OF HOME. 

"Now, mother, get me a rifle-gun, 

And a jacket of blue or gray, 
And I think you'll hear of the prettiest fight, 

Or the funniest run-away !" 

And the mother, parting the sunny curls, 

Smiled in the earnest eyes : 
" I know the lad ; he's of Johnny's age, 

And just about Johnny's size. 

" He'll never run from your rifle-gun ; 

We'll try him another way. 
Speak lovingly to that lad, my son, 

And hear what he has to say." 

Soon, in the porch that faced the hills, 
They stood in the waning light, 

And a voice replied to the voice that cried, 
"Johnny, my dear, good-night !" 

And Johnny's smile, as he turned away, 

Was audible, sweet, and clear; 
And it was a rather good thing to say, 

And a very good thing to hear. 

And I hope the world as it grows in grace 

Will learn how a war is won ; 
That Love is still the invincible,— 

And bracket its rifle-gun. 



POETA IN RURE. 



93 



POETA IN RURE. 

Now, doth it give the corn a start, 
Or cause the cotton grow ? 

They mock the minstrel's idle art 
My neighbors of the hoe ; 

With rumble of the tumble cart, 
And lyric of " Gee- Whoa !" 

Their legends are of doughty teams, 

Of oxen and of sheep ; 
I hear them driving in their dreams 

And counting in their sleep. 

And yet their wit is rich in speech, 

The wisest, uninspired ; 
Their limbs unto the fiddle screech 

Right rhythmically wired. 

Within these fields of care and strife 
A man may come, no doubt, 

To be a poet, all his life, 
And never find it out. 

To dwell among his woolly flocks, 
His herds of hoof and horn, 

Less happy than the licensed " ox 
That treadeth out the corn !" 



94 



SONGS OF HOME. 

To hold the sky in all its scope 

As one great weather-sign, 
To toil athwart the vineyard's slope 

And never taste the wine ! 

The day must have its dinner-gong, 

The nation must be fed, 
Yet one will weary of a song 

With one sole burden, dread. 

And one must count his labor " naught," 

His harvest quite in vain, 
Who reared no blossom when he wrought 

With summer on the plain, 
No garland of a golden thought 

To glorify his grain. 



THE FLOWERS. 

A blessing on the broad bright lands, 
Whose children come to ours, 

And lead us with their fragrant hands 
Around the World of Flowers. 

No dust upon our sandalled feet, 

As they who go to find 
In other lands a flower as sweet 

As one they left behind. 



THE FLOWERS. g ~ 

With them our thoughts all journeys take, 

With them our fancies roam, 
And ever when we will we wake 

And find ourselves at home. 

They bid the green oasis creep 

Around the desert wells ; 
They sound on many a cedared steep 

The sweet pagoda bells. 

They wake for us the breath and bloom 

Where soft Circassia smiles; 
They veil beneath their tender bloom 

The maidens of the Isles. 

All times and climes they journey through, 

Until their pathway lies 
Beyond the gates of Morning, to 

The walks of Paradise. 

And many an angel of the earth 

Their upward path hath trod, 
Gone from our garden gateways forth 

Into the arms of God. 



9 6 



SONGS OF HOME. 



THE PEDLER MAN AT TORCH HILL. 

Poets and pedlers ! From the early day- 
Till now the night of "letters" closes blind, 

Pedlers and poets on the king's highway 

Have met, with salutations quaint though kind. 

Who walks with Wordsworth, or with Shakspeare's 
wings 

Winnows the gold from this world's dusty cares, 
May glean a grace from life's most common things, 

And entertain an angel unawares. 

In thoughts like these my inner man rejoiced, 
As nightfall dropped a pedler at the gate, 

A huge " bed- tick" upon his shoulder hoist, 
A thousand pounds — in size, if not in weight. 

The house-dog silenced, from the gate I heard 
The olden plaint of all the world's highways : 

\l Footsore and hungry !" though, I wis, no word 
Of retrospective hint at " better days !" 

" A plague on pedlers !" is the form of wish 
With which one's pedler welcome should begin ; 

Which, as a poet, I condensed to " Pish !" 
And bade the biped dromedary in. 



THE PEDLER MAN AT TORCH HILL. 97 

And in he came ; at every step a bow- 
That offered me the mattress on his back, 

As one by duty doubly bent — to show 
His weight of obligation and of pack. 

Much talk, but none that I might understand ; 

Of plaintive demonstration, also, much. 
I only gathered that his Faderland 

Was farther off, — Jerusalem or Dutch ! 

Some arrant knight of commerce, who hath strayed 
To these poor parts, by cheating fancy led, 

To drive a brief but profitable trade 

In lies and linen tapes, thieving and thread ; 

In drill-eyed sharps, no sharper than himself, 
Tho' dull his eye and all adust his skin ; 

To plunder pity of her slender pelf, 

And thrive in chief when chiefly "taken in." 

His supper done, I him to bed allowed ; 

But soon thereafter, passing unawares, 
I saw (and beg your pardon if I bowed 

And said " Amen") the pedler at his prayers ! 

I do not deem all pedlers are devout ; 

I do not argue that they all are Dutch ; 
I only urge the pressure of the doubt 

To hold in reasonable honor such. 



9 8 SONGS OF HOME, 



"GELERT." 

'Twas not for special beauty, 

Though beautiful was he, 
Nor yet in reverent honor 

Of a stainless pedigree, 
That reached across the ocean, 

Through twice a century. 

But for love that ever listened 
To affection's lightest breath, 

For a faithfulness that glistened 
In the very haze of death, 

That our cedars droop their shadows, 
And our jasmines twine a wreath. 

Under the great Deodar 

There lies a little mound, — 
As beneath some proud pagoda 

A prince might slumber sound, 
In the verdure and the odor 

Of consecrated ground, — 
And a hand hath written " Gelert" 

In honor of a hound. 



HOME. 



99 



HOME. 

Forest-girded, cedar-scented, 

Veiled like Vesper, sweet and dim ; 
Pure as burned the Temple's glory, 

Shadowed by the Seraphim ; 
Islet from contending oceans, 

Coral-cinctured, crowned with palm, 
Where the wrestling world's commotions 

Melt through music into calm ; 
Throats that sing and wings that flutter 

Softly 'mid the balm and bloom ; 
Sweeter sounds than lip can utter 

Hath my heart for thee, 
My home. 

Bless that dear old Angel Saxon 

For the sounds he formed so well ; 
Little words, the nectar-waxen 

Harvest of a honey-cell, 
Sealing all a summer's sweetness 

In a single syllable ! 
For, of all his quaint word-building, 

The queen -cell of all the comb 
Is that grand old Saxon mouthful, 

Dear old Saxon heartful, 
Home. 



POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR. 



"NINA"— HER EYES. 

I know the summers that can speak 

For all the olive of thy cheek ; 

I know the gentle lineage rare 

That crowns thy head with midnight hair ; 

But whence — don't send me to the skies ! — 

The splendor, Nina, of your eyes ? 

Now, Nina, there's your needle ! Knit ! 

Your lashes drooped a little bit ; 

I'm writing " letters," and afraid 

Of brilliant cross-lights ; lend me shade. 

Nay ! there's a dimple at your lips, 

And there — you dazzle, past eclipse ! 

Was it of much or little "grace" 
To mock these clouds of commonplace 
With a whole summer sunset's dyes, 
Because you must lift up your eyes ? 
Sending my missive all amiss, 
Turning my "letter" into this ! 

You couldn't help it ! Once, amid 
A temple's twilight, it betid 
The soft glow of a vestal's light 
Slept on the crosslet of a knight, 

103 



io4 



POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR. 

And wrought — nor, Nina, might it less 
Of loyalty and tenderness — 
The matchless radiance that lies 
Deep in the splendor of your eyes ! 



TO THE LITTLE LADY ALICE. 

No dew distils on Georgia's hills, 

Or eke Circassia's valleys, 
That leaves a pearl on lily's curl 

As pure as Lady Alice ! 
My lily-pet ! my violet ! 

My little Lady Alice ! 

As rare as rise through Southern skies 

Aurora-boreales ! 
As rare as rose on Northern snows, 

Or heart's-ease in a palace, 
Is she, my sprite ! my brownie bright ! 
My little Lady Alice ! 

The wise old Greek his fate might seek, 

And bear his foes no malice ; 
And so might I, my idol's eye, 

\{ you but bore the chalice, 
And drink to thee in three times three, 

My little Lady Alice ! 
My heart's delight ! my star of night ! 
My perfect little chrysolite ! 

My little Lady Alice ! 



BROWNIE BELLE, OF THE ESQUILINE. 10 $ 



BROWNIE BELLE, OF THE ESQUILINE. 

(ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE.) 

Where the almond blossoms first, 
Where the nectarines are nursed, 
Grew with cedar and with pine, 
Grew with violet and vine, 

With her brows of calm, 
With her eyes divine, 

With her breath of balm, 
And her blush like wine, 
Brownie Belle, of the Esquiline. 

Grew in grace, 
Like the blue Glycine ; 

Grew in grace, 
Like a jessamine ; 

In stateliness, 
Like a Norfolk pine ; 

With a tender gloom 
In her eyes divine, 

And an olive bloom 
Through her blush like wine ; 

Grew in grace, — 
And I knew the girl, 

From her dancing foot 
To her floating curl. 



106 POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR. 

Grew in grace, — 
And I knew her well, 

From the honey-dew 
To the nectar-cell ; 

From the morning mist, 
Till the manna fell 

On the tents, the lips 
Of Israel. 



In stateliness, like the star of trees 
With the silver lace, from the Indian seas, 
When the silver mist 
And the stars are met 
On her coronet ; 
On the stately crest of the stateliest 
Star-lit Tree-star, 
Bright Deodar. 

Sweet the air of the Esquiline, 
From morning prayer till nuts and wine ; 
Where the dancing gods of days divine 
Might dance on sods embroidered fine 
With the richest tints of the ripest wine 
Of every land where the sun doth shine. 

We'll gather all 

Of the bright and sweet ; 
We'll lay them all 

At our Brownie's feet. 
We'll gather all for a garland feast, 
When the stars recall our star from the East. 
When she comes, she comes 



« sunbeams 

With her balm and bloom ; 
And the tender gloom 
Of her eyes shall shine 
To crown the lights of the Esquiline. 



107 



"SUNBEAM." 

(to miss e. v. c.) 

It was an old philosopher, 

And also very wise, 
That had a little " prism" 

And specs before his eyes ; 
And he caught a little sunbeam 

That he would analyze. 

It was a rare philosopher 

That labored days and nights, 

And split his little sunbeam 
Into — seven — lights ; 

And he blessed his specs and prism 
That showed such lovely sights. 

And he gathered mighty glory 

For doing little more 
Than a little drop of water 

Had often done before ; 
And his name, 'twas Newton, kindles 

'Till the light shall shine no more. 



io 8 POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR. 

Ah ! had he caught the sunbeam 

Our poet saw one day, 
He would have split his prism, 

And thrown his specs away ; 
A dew-drop could have shown him 

More colors to the ray. 

Our poet keeps no prism 

Nor other glasses, yet 
His simple optics sundered, 

'Twixt pearl and violet, 
At least a half a hundred, 

And he is counting yet ! 



TO A LADY OF TEXAS, IN ITALY. 

(MRS. WILLIAM MAVERICK.) 

A thousand leagues of steam and foam, 

To breathe, tho' but an hour, in Rome ! 

To wake in Florence, or to be 

Cradled in Venice by the sea ! 

Yet sometimes, lady, when thine eyes 

Are weary of yon wondrous skies, 

With all thy pulses languid grown 

To miracles in stain and stone, 

Seek thou some sacred fountain dim, 

A mirror with its marble rim, 

And bend thy "sunbeam" face to see 

The fairest thing in Italy ! 

Yea, lovelier than the sunset seas 

Kindled, to guide the Genoese ! 



TO 



109 



TO 

OFFENDED BY A COMPLIMENT FROM A STRANGER. 

What ! must the glowing heart forbear 

Its homage to the skies, 
When all the glories wandering there 

But wake to win our eyes ? 
Shall earth come forth in vain to wear 

Her robe of endless dyes, 
And not to aught of bright or fair 

Our adoration rise ? 
Nay, from the sternest soul would steal 
The homage it could not conceal. 

The stars with but a lovelier ray 

Our lowly homage bless; 
And earth receives with smiles more gay 

Our debt of thankfulness. 
Then why the deep emotion stay, 

The burning words repress, 
That fill the worship we would pay 

To woman's loveliness? 
As pure as Heaven, than earth more fair, 
How dark the soul that bows not there ! 



no POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR. 



THE BRIDE. 

Her eyes are bright as stars that keep 

Their watch in midnight skies \ 
Her voice as sweet as winds that sweep 

The harps of Paradise. 
And thou must quench the starry rays 

That make the midnight fair, 
Ere thou canst teach the heart to gaze 

And not to worship there. 

Learn, if thou wilt, from wisdom's store, 

The stoic's boasted art; 
And lose, like him, the only lore 

That could have cheered thy heart. 
Then die, for life hath naught of bloom 

Around thy path to shine ; 
And death can bring no deeper gloom 

To souls so dark as thine. 



THE BR O WN BR ID GE. j j i 



THE BROWN BRIDGE. 

The brown bridge spans the streamlet, and 
The evergreens from hand to hand 
Arch the roadway's snow-white sand. 

A picture ! and I loved the same 
Till Annie there to meet me came 
And turned my picture to a frame, 

An oval, such as might entwine 
The mild Madonna of a shrine 
From some old master's hand divine. 

And ever since, in passing there, 

The same sweet phantom haunts the air 

With azure eyes and golden hair. 

Grow on, ye evergreens, and throw 
Soft shadows on the dust below ! 
And ye dark waters murmur low 

Of other streams, not dark or wide, 
So Annie with the grace that died 
Shall meet me on the other side. 



, i 2 POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR. 



THE VALLEY OF NACOOCHEE, 
"EVENING star." 

Child of our Chattahoochee, 

Hid in the hills afar ; 
Oh ! beautiful Nacoochee, 

Light of the Evening Star ! 

Smile of the dreaming maiden, 

Song of the bird's release ; 
Grace of the blest in Aidenne, 

Valley of light and peace. 

Clasped in the mountain shadows, 
The May dew on her breast, 

Her breath is the balm of meadows, 
Her name is a hymn to " Rest." 

The voice of a loved one calling 
To feet that have wandered far: 

Return, for the night is falling ; 
Rest with the Evening Star. 



THE HALL. 



Il 3 



THE HALL. 

(page brook.) 

There is dust on the door-way, there is mould on 

the wall ; 
There's a chill at the hearth-stone, a hush through 

the hall ; 
And the stately old mansion stands darkened and cold 
By the leal loving hearts that it sheltered of old. 

No light at the lattice, no gleam from the door ; 
No feast on the table, no mirth on its floor ; 
But "Glory departed" and silence alone. 
" Dust unto dust" upon pillar and stone. 

No laughter of childhood, ho shout on the lawn ; 
No footstep to echo the feet that are gone : 
Feet of the beautiful, forms of the brave, 
Failing in other lands, gone to the grave ! 

No carol at morning, no hymn rising clear ; 

No song at the bridal nor chaunt at the bier. 

All the chords of its symphonies scattered and riven ; 

Its altar in ashes, its incense in Heaven ! 

Is there paean for Glory, whose triumph shall stand 
By the wreck of a home once the pride of the land ? 

10* 



ii4 



POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR. 



Its chambers unfilled as its children depart, 
The melody stilled in its desolate heart ! 

Yet the verdure shall creep to the mouldering wall, 
And the sunshine shall sleep in the heart of "The 

Hall;" 
And the foot of the pilgrim shall find till the last 
Some fragrance of Home at this shrine of the Past. 



THE OLD HARPSICHORD. 

" In one room of this deserted mansion we came upon an old harp- 
sichord with a single unbroken string. Evoking the last sound from 
it, we extracted the key, which you will find herewith." — Letter from 
the Old Dominion. 

What of the night, old sleeper? 

What of thy watch so lone? 
Of the darkness and dust, and deeper, 

The silence that shrouds thine own ? 
What song for the tuneless Reaper 

Who binds all songs in one? 
Crown thou his sheaf, oh sleeper ! 

With a requiem monotone ! 

One chord in thy heart unbroken ! 

One key to that chord alone ! 
A touch — and thy thought hath spoken ; 

A sigh— and thy song hath flown ! 
A sigh for the single token 

Of all who have sung and flown ! 



THE COLONNADE. 

Of symphonies ceased forever ; 

Of harmonies heard no more ; 
Of chords that have ceased to quiver 

Or ever thy task was o'er; 
Songs and their symphonies never 

Dying in requiems more. 

Silence and darkness blended, 

Dust on a desolate shore, 
Footprints of angels ascended 

Around us forevermore ! 
When the lips of the beautiful singers 

With the silvery chords lie low, 
And only an echo lingers 

Of the melodies sweet and old, 
To blend 'neath their seraph fingers 

With a hymn from their harps of gold. 



ii5 



THE COLONNADE. 

A stillness in the lonely hall, 

A shadow on the vacant wall, 

A broken hearth, an incense flown, 

And dust upon the altar-stone ; 

What deeper gloom to match the shade 

That wraps the lonely Colonnade ? 

White roses round the columns cling, 
White moonbeams in the flow'r may fling 
A mingled shadow, when appear 
The lost of many a lonely year, 



n6 POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR. 

In phantom forms, that meet and fade 
Along the lonely Colonnade. 

No more beneath the moonlit leaves 
The evening star its song receives ; 
For many golden chords are riven 
That sent that twilight song to heaven, 
And scattered far the feet that strayed 
Along the lonely Colonnade. 

No more in murmured tones rehearse 
The hero's tale, the lover's verse, 
Nor voice of song, nor sigh of flute, 
Where lips of sweeter tone are mute ; 
Oh, lips ! that loving hands have laid 
Far from the lonely Colonnade. 

Oh, sister ! if the past imparts 
But dreams of sadness to our hearts, 
Why ask we of the coming years 
A better blessedness than tears, 
Amid the pale white flowers arrayed 
Along life's lonely Colonnade? 



THE HILLS. 



117 



THE HILLS. 



Below the granite chain 

Appalachian, 

Above the sandy plain, 

Which under-dips the main, 
There lies a belt of hills, 
Which the Middle Georgian tills. 

The hills ! and how came they ? 
The yellow, red, and gray? 
The gravel, sand, and clay ? 
The big ones, why so tall ? 
The little ones, so small ? 
How came they here at all ? 

Is the mystery that fills 

The history of the hills, 

With much perplexity 

For my geology. 

Whether deposited 
In the deep ocean's bed, 
As one might softly spread 
An ancient feather-bed 
Over an earthquake's head. 
Till waking with a shout, 
The giant laid about, 
And made a hill "crop out" 



n8 POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR. 

For every deadly blow- 
Delivered down below. 



Or whether 'twas the gift 
(A. most prodigious lift !) 
Of the era known as " drift," 
When the ice-raft stole away 
The gravel, sand, and clay 
From many an Arctic bay, 
And "bowlder," by the way, 
Bore southward day by day 
Till on the floor it lay, — 

On the grooved and furrowed floor 
Of the slow-receding sea, — 
And, cracking with a roar, 
Poured mud from every pore, 
To make one hillock more, 

Which the slow-receding sea, 
With its softly-lapping hands 
Amid the moistened sands, 

Like a man that undertakes 

To mould before he bakes, 

Or a child that patti-cakes, — 
Which the slow-receding sea, 
With its softly-dimpled hands, 
With its foam-white ruffled hands, 
With its diamonded hands, 

Bequeathed as "Cotton-Lands" 

To all the world — to me, 

And my Geology, 

A much perplexi — T. 



THE HILLS. 



II. 



119 



" The hills, and how came they?" 
We pondered yesterday ; 
As one who rhymes his way 

Through the mystery that fills 

The history of hills — 

The everlasting hills — 
With an everlasting doubt 
As to how they came about. 

To a metre not more slow, 
To a measure that must flow 
To the echo of a woe, 
We rhyme again to show 
The hills, and where they go. 
Their coming none may know, 
Nor question where they go / 

Oh, brothers ! shall the land 
Which our loving Father planned 
For the honest heart and hand, — 
The hills our Father planned, 
And with softest seasons spanned, 
Which he gathered from the sea, 
And gave to you and me, — 
Hear the echo of the woe, 
" The hills ! and here they go 
To the ocean, whence they sprung, 
Bewept, and not unsung /' ' 
My brothers, answer No ! 



POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR. 

The hills ! We love the hills. 
Their heads are nearest Heaven, 
Their sides to morn and even ! 
There is a joy that fills 
Their anthem to the day ; 
There is a peace that fills 
The requiem of hills 
To the light that dies away. 
'Tis more than song or wine 
To see their summits shine, 
Through twilight's purple wine, 
Like islands of the blest, 
In the ocean of their rest ; 
When the broad palm of the sun, 
With his signet-star thereon, 
Is raised in benison, 

" Hold fast the hills below ! 
Your hills and homes, and so 
Until the dark be light, 
God bless you, and good-night !" 



JUNIAL VSKEE. ■ 1 2 



JUNIALUSKEE. 

(A FAMOUS SOUTHERN APPLE OF INDIAN ORIGIN.) 

Where shall the red man rest at last, that the white 

man shall not find him ? 
Where shall his wigwam smoke arise, nor draw his 

"fate" behind him? 
Where shall he plant an apple-seed that a pale-face 

shall not gather 
The golden fruit ere the downward root hath tapped 

the Indian's father? 

Under his spreading apple-tree, to his sons and daugh- 
ters dusky, 

With their heads bowed down to their travel-gear, 
spoke Chieftain Junialuskee. 

His sons and daughters are on their way, and Junia- 
luskee follows. 

And his apple-tree ? Why Junialusto sold it for fifty 
dollars ! 



ii 



I2 2 POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR. 



NANTAHALEE. 

You've heard, I think, of the beautiful maid 

Who fled from Love's caresses, 
Till her beautiful toes were turned to roots, 
And both her shoulders to beautiful shoots, 
And her beautiful cheeks to beautiful fruits, 

And to blossoming spray her tresses ! 

I've seen her, man ! she's living yet 

Up in a Cherokee valley ! 
She's an apple-tree ! and her name might be, 
In the softly-musical Cherokee, 

A long-drawn " Nantahalee !" 
'Tis as sweet a word as you'll read or write ; 
Not quite as fair as the thing, yet quite 
Sufficient to start an old anchorite 
Out of his ashes to bless and bite 

The beautiful " Nantahalee !" 



FABLE, 



123 



FABLE. 

NOT IN .ESOP. 

Twin Buckets there lived in a well. 
This is their Parable. 

Said the one, as he downward went, 
With a rattle of discontent : 

"What folly ! drawn full to the top, 
Returning with never a drop !" 

Quoth his mate, coming skyward, "Why, nay! 
I see it another way. 

" However thirsty we sink, 

We rise with a plenty to drink !" 

Life's tapestry's woven so that it 
Shines just as you choose to look at it, 

And responds, as your wisdom hath struck it, 
Like a full or an empty bucket ! 



12 4 POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR 



THE SPHINX. 

The Sphinx by the Desert stands, 

Lord of the lonely lands, 

With the dust of the Desert sands 

On its head, and its heart, and its hands. 

Ages before the Flood 

Ere the Delta grew out of the mud, 

Up to its knees it stood 

In a deluge of tears and blood ! 

The Desert was out of sight 

When the creature was dragged to light, 

Out of the caves of Night, 

And the Desert was puzzled quite. 

'Twas a riddle they used to tell 
At the digging of Joseph's well, 
Ere the scourge of the Pharaohs fell 
On the shoulders of Israel ! 

And there's never a star that winks 

On Africa as it sinks 

But wonders whenever it thinks 

Of the world and its wonderful Sphinx. 

And there's nothing by land or sea 
Can ever expect to be 
Such an ugly old puzzle as he 
Except old Tyranny. 



THE FARMER MAN. 125 

A riddle to rest unread 

Till the Pharaohs are dead, 

Till the people shall toil for bread, 

And not for a stone instead. 



THE FARMER MAN. 

TO W. N. N. 

FYTTE I. 

The farmer man ! I see him sit 
In his low porch, to muse a bit 
The while I throw him in a — Fytte. 

What time the jasmines scent the air, 
And drop their blossoms in his hair; 

What time the evening echo tells 

Of trampling herds and tinkling bells ; 

And all the echoes of the Ark 
Salute the planter-patriarch ! 

So sitting with his collar spread, 
And heels y' levelled with his head; 

A monarch in his mere content, 
A king by general consent. 
11* 



j 2 6 POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUM OR. 



FYTTE II. 

And framed between his heels he sees 
A picture, which perchance may please : 

The distant city, and more nigh 
The river's twinkle, like an eye 

Obscured at intervals by motes, 
Which quite extract its beam with boats. 

The purple hills where, swift or slow, 
The cloudless shadows come and go ; 

While, dun as dormice, at their hem 
The little cars follow them, 

With all the clatter that portends 
The most prodigious dividends ! 

The cottages with curling smoke, 
Significant of "colored folk," 

The first without a foe or care, 

To breathe Millennium's morning air. 

And" in their midst a lovely mound 
Most eloquent, without a sound, 

Tells how the parting yea?- s have sped 
With the black savage and the red. 



THE FARMER MAN. 

The yellow cornfields and the brown, 
Where Southern snows have melted down, 

And borne its all-abundant lint 

To drown the mills and drain the mint. 

The woods whose autumn glories cheer 
The solemn sunset of the year, 

With oval openings, which enshrine 
Such views as we are picturing, 

And hint how much the traveller sees 
Who stays at home and studies trees, 

And thanks the telescope, tho' dim, 
That keeps its smallest eye on him, 

And nearer home all shape and sheen 
Of Nature's endless evergreen, 

Through which a winding walk doth glide 
To orchards, jubilant and wide, 

Restrained within an emerald edge, 
Of fair, tho' somewhat thorny hedge. 

An archway entrance, and o'erhead 
This little legend to be read : 

"Partake of all the fruit, nor grieve 
For Eden's morn or Eden's Eve !" 



127 



I2 8 POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND HUMOR. 

FYTTE III. 

But what of him, the farmer man, 
His way of life and being's plan? 

Why simply (be it so with many !) 
That " Now's as good a time as any." 

Yet he can tell you of a morn 
Ere yonder valley sang with corn, 

Or yonder hill-top bared its brow, 
Submissive to the sun and plow. 

And long before yon proud white spires 
Crushed out the low red council-fires. 

With not a "turn-out" toe to press 
The dim walks of the wilderness. 

Of many a season come and flown, 
With strokes of fortune and his own ; 

Till waves of varied memory 

Shall leave him stranded as we see ; 

With time's old foam-marks in the lines, 
Now starry with the jessamines. 

FYTTE IV. 

His politics I might rehearse 
In limits lesser than my verse. 



THE FARMER MAN. 

Should any tool my State invade, 
Then mention me as strict "State aid." 

Till then I mind my own affairs, 

And trust my friends to manage theirs. 

His science? such as thou may'st hit 
By ploughing deep in search of it. 

His wit? the shortest link that girds 
An English thought to English words. 

His credit ? shall the world forget 
The Atlas that upheld her debt ? 

His creed ? in reverence of the past 
Old faith and feeling holds he fast. 

So that my muse's stenograph 
Anticipates his epitaph, — 

" He read the Bible, loved his wife, 
And hated humbug all his life." 

And, happily, to round my "pome," 
"Loved God, his neighbor, and his home.' 



129 



MEMORIAL AND RELIGIOUS POEMS. 



'Ji 



IN ME MORI AM. 

THOMAS MADUIT NELSON, iETAT 7 1. 

They fail from council and from camp, they are falling 

one by one, 
Those grand old heroes of the stamp of God -loved 

Washington ; 
The task is wrought of mighty minds, their glorious 

day is done, 
And Freedom mourns a faded star with every setting 

sun. 

The massive brow, the kindly hand, the proud and 
stalwart form 

That stood as beacons in the night, as bulwarks in the 
storm. 

Ah ! few and far on Glory's slope their lessening num- 
bers stand, 

"The Pillars of a People's hope," the Titans of the 
land. 

The mould is broken ; here no more those regal souls 
we meet 

Who kept their honor, tho' the world had rocked be- 
neath their feet ; 

12 133 



134 MEMORIAL AND RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

The calm, clear dignity that shone no clearer for re- 
nown, 

The matchless majesty that won, but would not wear a 
crown. 

Ah ! when descends the sullen night of Freedom's 

darkest hour, 
When Demagogue and Parasite defile the seats of 

power, 
When dust is on the eagle's crest, and stain on stripe 

and star, 
Ah ! who shall fill their robes in peace, or lift their 

swords in war ? 

One more to that immortal band, that long illustrious 

line, 
That counts no nobler name, old friend, or purer soul 

than thine ; 
Yea, with the mighty in their death, their rest, and 

their reward, 
Sleep, in thy cloudless Fame and Faith, true soldier of 

the Lord. 

Sleep with the mighty in thy death ! yet not with these 

alone ; 
Sleep with the loving hearts that beat so truly to thine 

own. 
Sleep with the sword-cross on thy breast, the well-worn 

scabbard by, 
Fit symbols of a soldier's rest and his reward on high. 



WILLIAM NELSON CARTER. 



135 



WILLIAM NELSON CARTER. 

SOLDIER OF THE SOUTH AT 1 6, OF THE CROSS AT 1 9, 
DIED AT KEY WEST, AGED 21. 

Spoke from the stainless azure 

Of immemorial veins, 
(t War for the right is over, 

Battle for bread remains." 

And he carried his bright smile from us, 

Our choral of bird and breeze, 
To the light of the tideless summers, 

The song of the tropic seas. 

So far ! — yet his soul's clear brightness 

Drew nearer, and never cold ; 
Found speech in the sea-bloom's whiteness, 

And kisses in fruits of gold. 

And sweeter than day-spring's murmur 
To the palm when the spice- wind stirs 

Were the voices that sang from the summer, — 
"Your darling has won his spurs!" 

And we sang to the voice of the summer, 
With a smile that was glad to tears, — 

" If your sea or your sand yield honor, 
Trust to the cavaliers !" 



i 3 6 



MEMORIAL AND RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

Sang ! — with the summer stooping 

To shatter us, root and crest ; 
With the lightning to signal "drooping," 

And the thunder to crash " at rest." 

Dumb ! and the clouds close o'er us, 
And the world reels blank and dim. 

Blind ! with our hands before us 
Beseeching the mists for him. 

Christ's soldier ! Through all the shadows 

One lily of light shall rise — 
Not far ! though it smiles from the meadows 

And summers of Paradise. 



MARY. 

(MARY H. DILLINGHAM.) 

Shall I whisper a name that was lovely of old, 
When the tale of the infant Redeemer was told, 
The honored of God, in her sorrow sublime, 
Still haunting the heart in the shadows of Time? 

O'er the starlight of Judah the night mists were rolled ; 
On the Galilee's bosom the shadows lay cold ; 
When it woke on the midnight so solemn and dim, 
With the flame of a star and the sound of a hymn, 

And bright with the lustre and sweet with the tone 
Of the angels that sang and the glory that shone. 



THE CHURCHYARD CROSS. 137 

Its echoes are soft, through the haze of the years, 
With the breath of her sigh and the dew of her tears. 

And still at the altar, and still at the hearth, 
From the cradle of Christ to the ends of the earth, 
As gentle in glory, as steadfast in gloom, 
It serves at His side, as it knelt at His tomb. 

And many shall bless it, and many have blest, 
From the morning of life till the morrow of rest ; 
And its fulness of meaning its music shall keep 
While a Mary shall watch or a Mary shall weep. 



THE CHURCHYARD CROSS. 

So, clasp thine arms about the Cross, 

And bow thy little head ; 
Draw close the only links between 

Our sorrows and our dead. 

So, fold thy pinions round the Cross, 
Sweet dove, and feel no fear ■ 

No note but one of tenderness 
Shall ever meet thee here. 

And from the mound of sacred earth 
Our sundered hearts between, 

Draw thou the fragrance of her worth, 
To keep her memory green. 



38 



MEMORIAL AND RELIGIOUS POEMS. 



LITTLE KATIE. 

The Lily we love ! it is whiter 

For the darkness that covers the day ; 

The pearl of our souls ! it is brighter 
For the shadows that turn to gray. 

To the sunlight that calls, its tender, 
Pale petals are closed and chill; 

To the dew, though it falls from the splendor 
Of stars, it is silent still. 

Let the darkness fall deep, and deliver 

Unveiled to our weary eyes 
The pearl by the Eden River — 

Our Lily in Paradise. 



OUR TREASURE IN HEAVEN. 

Sleep sweetly, gentle one ; 

Sleep till thy shrouded eyes 
Shall waken 'mid the Bowers of God, 

Oh, Bird of Paradise ! 

Oh, softest, gentlest hands 
Did soothe thee to thy rest ; 

And the pure souls that welcomed thee 
Were highest of the blest. 



THE CHILDREN THAT ARE NOT: 

Often we'll call thy name, 
And the pure joy it brings 

Shall cheer us as the rustling sound 
Of thy young seraph's wings. 

The hosts that follow thee 
To the pure Throne of God 

Shall find no shadow in the vale 
Thy little feet have trod. 



139 



THE CHILDREN THAT ARE NOT." 

The children — the children that are not ! Ah, why 
From the ends of the earth swells that desolate cry ? 
Has the dull earth a glory, the bright skies a gloom, 
That a wail should arise at the gates of the tomb ? 

Ah ! deem ye the sparrow its pathway may hold, 
Yet a lamb of Christ's love be lost from his fold ? 
That the diamond's sparkle should never burn dim, 
Yet a spirit be quenched that was kindled by Him ? 

Are the husbandman's tears with his toil in vain? 
From the scattered seed shall there spring no grain? 
Hath the chrysalis wings ere its shroud is wound? 
Hath the violet breath in the dull cold ground ? 

Yea ! bless ye God, as ye bend above 

The broken lilies of tears and love, 

That not without witness the hope was given 

That a "little child" should be first in Heaven. 



I4 o MEMORIAL AND RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

Yea ! bear them to rest 'mid the flowers that tell 
Their Master's meaning so clear and well, 
And know by their pathway an angel hath trod 
From the brightness of earth to the bosom of God ! 



FAITH. 



Why sits pale Sorrow at the gate of Heaven, 
With eyes so wan, such wild and haggard air, 

As one whose woe with God's own arm had striven, 
And won the triumph of a wild despair ? 

Crouched where the shadow of the marble portal 
Falls deep and deeper on her clouded eyes, 

Speeding with wail and cry the feet immortal 
That enter there the walks of Paradise ! 

Angel of Faith ! shall sullen sorrow render 

Thy smile a mockery to the hearts that mourn ? 

Deepen the gloom, yet not reveal the splendor 
Where Saints depart and Seraphim are born ? 

Star of our hearts ! what other light may linger, 
When on our eyes the tomb's black shadow falls, 

If thou trace not with thine uplifted finger 
The gathering glory on its inner walls ? 

And thou ! on thine own gentle bosom blending 
The broken lilies of our tears and love, 

Lighten the pathway where our feet are tending, 
Lengthen the cords that guide our hearts above ! 



SONG BY NIGHT. 



141 



SONG BY NIGHT. 

And are these the days of the darkening haze, 

The mists whence no star may quiver? 
And is this the moan of the monotone 

Of the dark and tideless river? 
We look not back on our weary track 

For the voice of a vanished chorus ; 
The lights are gone that have led us on, 

But the path lies straight before us. 

Let the hair grow white, let the failing sight 

Await but a clouded morrow ; 
We keep the faith that we pledged to death 

And the troth we plighted sorrow ! 
There are flowers that bloom by the quiet tomb 

Of the gentle, the true, and tender ; 
And they are all that our prayers recall, 

Or the sepulchre can surrender ! 

Are there forms as fair as we buried there ? 

Are there lips with such fragrance laden ? 
Are there sounds as sweet as the bounding feet 

That are white 'mid the lilies of Aidenne? 
It may be so, but they bring no glow 

To hearts that are haunted ever 
By the shadow that lies on the shrouded eyes, 

And the lips that are sealed forever. 



1 42 MEMORIAL AND RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

Bid Death remove from the brows we love 

The damps of his dark'ning river; 
Let Heaven restore on its shining shore 

The lost whom we love forever ! 
Their light alone on our pathway thrown, 

Their star to our darkness given, 
Shall lend its fires to the trembling wires 

That are linked to our hearts and Heaven, 



TO MRS, L. E. C. 

Upborne by angels in a world of sorrow, 
In others' anguish losing half her own ; 

So taught of grief that darkened souls might borrow 
Their light of sunshine from her lips alone ! 

Herself a seraph, whose unfolding pinions 
And upward glance betray her better birth, 

Yet lingering still amid the dull world's minions 
To win some wanderer from the ills of earth. 

As fair of form as lily-pure of spirit, 

Heaven watched, yet humble in her upward way; 
Ah ! such as she are they who shall inherit 

The strength and triumph of a better day. 



LINES. 



143 



LINES. 

You may call : she will come ! Not the shadow of 
night 

Shrouds a sorrow she shuns to meet, 
And you shall not know by her step so light 

That sharpness hath pierced her feet : 

That the balm of her healing was bruised of pain, 

The breath of a smitten lyre; 
That the touch, so cool to your fevered brain, 

Was purified by fire. 

But you shall believe that a wing so swift, 

And a voice of so sweet a tone, 
Shall shine with the stars when the clouds uplift, 

And sing by the great white Throne. 



144 



MEMORIAL A'ND RELIGIOUS POEMS. 



ILLUMINATING LETTERS. 

She wrought : and at her reverent touch, 
That lingered long in loving much, 

As to the sunlight and the dew 

The tendril twined, the floweret grew, 

Till burned around each holy name 
A brightness as of altar flame ; 

Anthem and incense in each word 
That bore the blossom or the bird ; 

Each letter's self a shrine, where art 
Uttered the worship of the heart. 

And still she wrought ; and still her touch, 
That lingered long in loving much, 

Recalled their task in that old time 
Who saw the slow cathedral climb, 

Grand with the prayers of many days, 
And glowing in its orb of praise ; 

Unfolding, as it neared the skies, 
A Passion-flower of centuries ; 



THE CEMETERY. I45 

Rich in all grace that love alone 

Can learn of Heaven, or teach to stone; 



Such love as waits the dawn, and gave 
The watch at midnight to His grave, 

Steadfast and tireless, till the hour 
Unveils the Temple's perfect Flower, 

" Christ !" May He wreathe, as these are wrought, 
Our lives with grace of deed and thought ! 



THE CEMETERY. 

A churchyard walk, and by the way 

We saw, on either hand, 
More symbols of the world's "decay" 

Than of the " better land !" 

With more of rigid carpentry, 

And less of bloom and leaf, 
Than tokened brotherhood in death, 

Or fellowship in grief. 

And yet, without these mouldering pales, 

'Twere easy to o'erspread, 
With Eden grace, these silent vales, 

This city of the dead. 
13 



Iz ,6 MEMORIAL AND RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

Without this mass of tangled brier 
Yon oak were not less green ; 

And happily yon Heavenward spire 
Were more distinctly seen ! 

The "vexed Bermuda" here might rest 

In undisturbed retreat, 
On many a long-forgotten breast 

And long-neglected street. 

The dead white column, cross and urn 

With Olive shadowed d* er, 
Might teach us, when we come to mourn, 

This much, if nothing more : 

That vainly o'er our lost delights 
The pomp of marble towers, 

Without the gentle care that writes 
Its Martha-thought in flowers. 



THE BEAUTY OE HOLINESS. 1 ^ 



THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 

Recall — while now thy longing gaze, 
Grows dim with more than autumn's haze — 
Of all the walks thy feet have pressed, 
That path the peacefullest to rest : 

Of fountains that thy need have nursed, 
That " well" the sweetest to thy thirst : 

Of flowers — and lo ! thy hands were full — 
That blossom the most beautiful : 

Of touch and tone, through all the past, 
The tenderest and lingering last : 

That radiance of the vanished years, 
Most radiant for thy very tears. 

Name that which, trembling like a star, 
Shines with our loved and lost, so far; 

Yet nearest to our inner dreams 
Brings the soft flow of Eden's streams; 

Lighting the shadow where we stand 
With angel eyes on either hand. 

Mute lips, or with hosannas, these 
Bear witness with our memories, 



148 MEMORIAL AND RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

In music blending to express 
Pure beauty in its perfectness — 
Earth's charm, Heaven's glory — 
" Holiness." 



EASTER. 



Christ ! arisen ? Lift your eyes ! 
Lo ! what glory fills the skies ! 
Winter's death is dead, and born 
The summer's hope in springing corn. 
While the lily cleaves the sod, 
Who shall bind the Son of God? 

Christ ! arise ? The sun to-day 
Unseals a tomb, and rolls away 
All mists of midnight like a stone ; 
All raiment save of light alone. 
Shall the single shadow fall 
On the Christ, the Lord of all ? 

Christ ! arisen ? Roman steel 
Sentineled that stone and seal. 
Rome, in her imperial power, 
Watched until the dawning hour, — 
Watched and witnessed / bowed and said, 
" Christ is risen from the dead !" 

Oh, by all an Age's trust ! 
By our darlings laid in dust ! 



THE CHURCH. I4g 

In our griefs the single stay ; 
Of our joys the central ray ; 
Cease, my Doubt, thy sentry tread ! 
" Christ is risen from the dead !" 



THE CHURCH. 

Dear Mother ! in this weary waste 

And wilderness of woe, 
How sweet the smile, how soft the rest 

Thy little children know ! 

The trumpet's clangor at thy wall 

Stirs not thy peace above; 
We hear, and only hear, the call 

Of our dear Mother's love. 

Her touch upon our infant brow, 

Her tears above our dead, 
Her tones of tenderness, are now 

As in the years that fled. 

Nor fades of all her bloom and balm 
One blossom from her wreath, 

More radiant in celestial calm 
For all the storms beneath. 

Bright Beacon ! nearest to the skies 

Of all that light the sea. 
Blest Haven ! where our treasure lies, 

And where our hearts would be. 



l5 o MEMORIAL AND RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

Most steadfast as our pillars fall 
And pride and pleasures cease. 

Earth's sorrows ! who hath known them all, 
Best knows thy perfect peace. 



THE END. 



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